Podcasting for Education

Podcasting has created a new way for student to actively become involved in their education. Podcasts are audio recordings stored as an mp3 file. Students can listen to these podcasts on ipods, computers, and CDs.  Mr. Coley's fifth-grade students use podcasting as a way to summarize their units. They break up the class into different groups and write scripts, record it and then pull it all together with a simple program like GarageBand. They then share their podcasts on the web. This is an awesome way to broadcast what you are learning and give the students an opportunity to listen to remember their units later on down the road. I also feel like this is a great resource for teachers to use. If classes post their podcasts, like Mr. Coley, then many other classrooms can enjoy the podcasts and learn from them as well. This is a great way to give students information other then the teacher lecturing. I feel like many kids would enjoy this unique way to learn and enjoy the change of pace. Listening to Themselves: Podcasting Takes Lessons Beyond the Classroom 

While creating out podcast in class I got to see how easy and useful this would be for my own classroom. This is a great project for a class to create. It allows them to be creative and can be done on any topic. I definitely plan on not only having my kids create podcasts, but also creating my own podcasts for my class to use. There is also a vast amount of resources online that I can use for my classroom. There are podcasts on any topic imaginable. Here's a great website to find podcasts for your classroom. You can also find a ton of free podcast in the itunes store as pictured below.

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