Podcast Your Class

I am not here to tell you how to create a podcast.  I am here to introduce you to podcasting. What is podcasting? How you might use it with your students? All questions you might be asking yourself right now.  My hope is you might find some interest in starting to create and use podcasts for your classes after reading the following.

What is a podcast?
A podcast is an audio file, saved as an mp3, where you talk about topics or ideas; just like a radio show.  These do not have to be professional.  They can be homemade using any sound recorder program.  Some tutorials use Audacity rather than the basic sound recorder on your computer. Audacity allows you to convert recordings into mp3 format within the program.  Most podcasts are free to download and use, and because of the mp3 format anyone can listen to them on computer or digital device like an iPod or cellphone. 

How you might use podcasts?
Podcasts could be useful in classes that have a lot of dialog.  While math does have dialog, a lot of the work in those types of classes are hands-on by seeing the math problems.  What I'm talking about here is English, History or Science classes.  These types of classes have on-going discussions where if students were to listen to a playback of the class they are/would be able to get something more out of the class; review or catch something they missed the first time.  Many students listen to music on the way to or from school, so if they were able to download the class discussion from the day before, and listen to it on the way to school it would allow them to review material before they step into the classroom.

Let's take for example a Government class talking about the Death Penalty, or some other topic that students may take sides on.  Every year you know this topic sparks a good discussion so this year you decide to hook up a microphone to your computer and record your lecture with the questions and discussions.  All of this material is being documented with limited effort by you the teacher.  There were some excellent views about the Death Penalty (or whichever topic), and you decide you want students to pick a side and write an essay about their view and why they chose this side.  You take the audio file that kept recording, save it, follow the instructions to create the podcast to post online (see below) and now your students have the opportunity to re-live the class all over again.  This allows them to review and pull information they might have missed during class or even use what was said as a source for their paper.

Maybe you teach a science class; we all know science has a lot of vocabulary.  If you know your lecture is going to have vocabulary or speak of new topics that student may not get the first time around, recording and posting that lecture as a podcast will give students the chance to listen to that vocabulary or topic cnocepts again.  If they have a test the next day or two days from now, they could listen to the podcast on their digital device while riding to school as a review.


There are endless possibilities for using a podcast, but remember the big idea behind them is to re-live or listen to missed information at a later date.  Students that miss your class for one reason or another could download the file and listen to it and get somewhat of an idea of what your class was about that day. If you begin to use podcasts be sure to keep reiterating that the files are on the internet to download, and show the students how and where to go to get the files.  Telling them one time will usually not suffice with middle or high school students.  If you do create any podcasts for your classes I would love to hear about your experience.


Tutorials for creating podcasts
Here are a few sites that have tutorials for podcasting.  If these do not help, or you what more information search "podcast tutorials" or "creating podcasts."

About.com

How to Podcast

How to Podcast (Audacity Tutorial)