I’ve spent the week in Ojai, California at the Teach the Teachers Collaborative at the Thacher School. Although the scenery is amazing, my lasting impression about this week comes from the people.  I worked with teachers, science content specialists and instructional technology specialists from the Los Angeles Unified school district.

I shared some ideas with the whole group on sunday night and they helped me with my california transition…I did a ceremonial loosening of the tie. The teachers were really receptive to the possibilities of developing student inquiry and  articulation AND the power of finding their voice and letting it resonate beyond the classroom.

This episode is built around asking good questions. I would argue that questions make up the heart of good educational podcasts, whether teacher or student produced. Questions set our focus, and mirror the needs of our audience. Student podcasts that are designed to be extended academic conversations can really benefit from being scaffolded by a framework of questions.

We’ll look at a couple approaches to generating questions.  The Question Game and using Bloom’s as a framework from finding questions that move us toward higher levels of exploration.

KidCast #56

This episode will focus on looking at syndication (subscription models) and the tools of aggregation (rss) as a way to create new streams from content already available from other producers. This can provide professional developers, teachers and students with a new strategy for leveraging rss into a type of ongoing academic scrapbook related to a particular research interest.

Kidcast #55

It’s time once again to celebrate all the great work that is happening in student and teacher created podcasts with the 2008 KidCast Podcasting Awards. This year we are shaking up the process a little bit. The truth is that the awards have been evolving each year as this technology grows and becomes more integrated into the learning process. Check out the episode for all the details and when you are ready, submit your entry via the submission form here.

Episode 54 - The 2008 Kidcast Podcasting Awards

Kidcast Episode 53

The field trip has been a staple of the elementary school experience for generations. What comes to mind when you think back to your field trips as a student? As a student part of it was the novelty of getting out of our four walls and onto a big yellow bus and we were going off to places like “Pioneer Village”, “The Henry Doorly Zoo”, or the “Joslyn Art Museum”. Compared to the mundane school room these were amazingly exotic places.

Field trip days were a departure from the regular patterns of school life….and by no small coincidence- these days became strongly embedded memories. Why? Because the experiences had hooks. They were filled with engaging moments, with stimuli - sights, sounds, interpersonal exchanges - we were wrapped up in content - absorbing as much as we could - snapping pictures with our kodamatic cameras.

The trouble is that learning by absorption isn’t very efficient unless it is properly scaffolded with questions and a framework for putting the experiences in context. I know this isn’t always the case, but I bet we can all think of a time when a field trip was taken with little or no academic preparation. As if to say that the educators responsibility was to do the logistical work of the trip, which is no small feat, and the learning work was the responsibility of the museum, zoo or whatever destination you are headed to.

So I sat down and started to think through the Field Trip and how the podcasting process might help make these experiences more meaningful from an academic perspective.

1. Build significance for your field trip

Set a larger context for the field trip well in advance of the day. Listen or watch podcasts and read articles about the significance of the site you are visiting. Build some collective knowledge about the significance of it. Essentially, answer the “Why are we going here question”. Have students produce a short “significance podcast reviewing some of the basic facts about the concepts you will be exploring on your trip. Also, have them establish why a visit to this location is a good way to understand the concept, events, or issues better.

2. Rethinking the KWL - Introducing the WTWT

WHY are we studying this?

What do we THINK we know?

What do we WANT to know?

What are we ready to TEACH?

I like this better because students can articulate the significance of things at the beginning. Some of what we “know” will be changed from the experience. Stating it in this way recognizes the fluidity of learning - that it isn’t where we are, but where we are headed that matters most. It also helps to articulate what we want to know. We have to set our intentions instead of wandering into the experience. We craft a set of intentions that will guide our attention, research and ultimatly our experience. And teaching is the hallmark of great podcasts because it focuses us on what we have to share with the world.

THE WTWT becomes a scaffold for everything that follows.

3. Move your students beyond observersation and into interaction.

Find a question about each display your see. Try to find the answer using the information provided and by asking the docents or tour guides. This is a wonderful opportunity to practice interviewing techniques. Be ready with a few questions and try to move beyond what is given in the displays and brochures and ask questions about the significance of what you are seeing.

4. Take reflective time outs to record descriptive accounts of the day.

What you have seen so far, the big questions you have answered, and the mysteries still to be solved. How do you plan to use what you found - application is often the missing piece in field trips. Without reflection and application - we are left with trivia and superficial learning.

As you create these reflections - Talk TO your audience as if they were there with you, but needed to know the context in which you are seeing things. From an audio point of view, be extremely descriptive and paint as clear a picture as you can. It isn’t really just about describing the physical spaces. It is about capturing the moments, the feelings, the expectations, and “bringing us along with you”. Keep these reflections short and purposeful. It will make your editing process easier when you get back.

5. Sound seeing tours

Record a guided tour of the exhibits and attractions that help the listener feel like they are really there. If, by chance, your listeners are actually there, they can use your sound seeing tour to guide their thinking and their senses.

6. Create a Quiz Shows

Create a quiz show or mystery tour that asks the audience to move through the space and content to find answers and look for meaning in the exhibits.

7. What was missing?

What could you create that would help take the experience to another level? Create a podcast that describes how you would improve the destination. This could be a collaborative podcast where all the ideas of students could be put into one episode. Think of this like an audio/video suggestion box.

8. Help promote the location by creating a psa that highlights what it has to offer. Send the PSA to them and they might just use it in their media campaigns or on their website. Effective PSAs are short and cut directly to the value and meaning of topic.

I also want to thank Wendy Goodwin of R.A. Mitchell Elementary School in Gadsden, Alabama for sharing her students’ GCAST podcasts about their field trip to Space Camp in Huntsville Alabama.

Recently, my friend and colleague, Dr. Guy Trainin stopped by my office and we started talking about the podcasts. He mentioned a podcast that he discovered from UPenn called 60 second lectures. I thought, Catchy name…probably worth checking out. So I did a search and found more than just a podcast with a catchy title. I found a new form that was as beneficial, from a learning point of view, to the writer as it was the listener.

During this episode, we’ll explore this form and the value that distilling ideas down may have for our development as teachers and our students’ development as communicators.

http://www.intelligenic.com/kidcast/shows/kidcast52.m4a

UPDATE:  The 60 second lectures are UPenn (University of Pennsylvania) not Penn State (The Pennsylvania State University) as previously posted.  Thanks Jenn for straightening me out. :)  I think this misunderstanding is a sign that I should visit Pennsylvania soon.

This week I sat down with two soon to be podcasters Jarred and Dale, who also happen to be pre service educators at the University where I work. They have some great ideas for a new podcast and are getting very close to being ready to launch it. We decided to record our conversation about what they hope to accomplish, the plans they have made, and questions they are still working through. I think it is an interesting conversation that may help inform some of our own conversations about our podcasts or the shows we are helping our students develop.

 http://www.intelligenic.com/kidcast/shows/kidcast051.m4a

The word argument has become a dirty word, it seems. It conjures up images of angry faces and unrest. We are here today to clear the name of the “argument” and bring it back to class. You see, without arguments, facts lack organization to take a stand. Arguments give rise to point of view and illumination.

This episode features a guest, Dr. Michael Schueth from the University of Nebraska - Lincoln, Department of English. Dr. Shueth and I discuss the concept of argument and its role in developing more effective writing and podcasting.

We will listen to an example from the Portable Radio Podcast which has produced several “Point of View” podcasts. After listening in to this example, we will try to categorize the types of arguments they have made and emphasize the value of this type of academic exercise. Special thanks to Jane Smith and Nathan Toft, from the grade 5 and 6 classes at A. Lorne Cassidy School in Ottawa, Canada for sharing their work on the Portable Radio Podcast.

http://www.intelligenic.com/kidcast/shows/kidcast50.m4a

John’s Podcast 

The details of a idea or the steps in a process are sometimes lost in our personal perspective. We make assumptions about what people know or how they will need to build upon foundational knowledge in order to really understand what we are presenting in our podcasts. This episode of Kidcast will explore some activities for developing sequence, priority, and articulation of detail.

• 10 Ten Lists as a way to develop our students’ ability to prioritize ideas
• When given a problem, explore cause and effect and support it with evidence, and suggest solutions
• Explaining a process with descriptive language and unassuming details
• Use scaffolds like Inspiration to offload ideas and arrange them visually to get the most effective sequence

http://www.intelligenic.com/kidcast/shows/kidcast49.m4a

I am in St. Louis, Missouri this week for the 2008 Midwest Education Technology Conference. Yesterday, I shared ideas about Podcasting with Purpose and GarageBand Mechanics. Two of my favorite presentations and it was great to see all the enthusiasm in Missouri for getting constructive and creative with these technologies. Today I also had the opportunity to share even more ideas in a general session titled “Technologies That Are Changing Education” in which I explored applications that I feel are having a tranformational impact on classrooms. It’s one of those “mind dump” kind of presentations where we get to go on a little journey together to imagine what school could look like if we begin to redirect our attention toward cycles of inquiry and creativity.  I’ll be adding the links we covered in a future post.  Check back soon for more. 

Buried deep within the Applications folder on Macintosh computers running the 10.5, or Leopard, operating system, is a small un assuming little application called “Podcast Capture”. This little app is the client side of an extremely powerful, game changing, system called Podcast Producer. By itself, the application is useless. But with an account on a Leopard Server, it becomes a streamlined conduit that gives users a fast and easy way to create video, audio, screencast podcast episodes and publish them in a single motion.

In this episode I’ll outline some of the things that I like about this application and some of the areas that are in need of improvement. If you are using podcast producer, I’d love to hear from you and get your initial impressions.

http://www.intelligenic.com/kidcast/shows/kidcast048.m4a

Recently I had the opportunity to meet Richard Dryfus. Yes…that Richard Dryfus. He was at the MacWorld conference working as a part of the John Lennon Educational Bus. Richard was there working with a group of students and recording content focused on bringing Civics curriculum back to the forefront in American schools.

In many districts Civics has been reduced to a single course. In a crowded curriculum continually being driven by testing, what is the case for allocating more time and energy to this subject area. Dryfus argues that there is actually a lot at stake. I have to admit that as I look around at the current political discourse and the superficial, overgeneralized “us v them” thinking that seems to dominate discussions of government, there is a lot of room for improvement.

As I listened to him share his thoughts, in the passionate and convincing way that IS Richard Dryfus, i couldn’t help but tie podcasting back into the conversation.

http://www.intelligenic.com/kidcast/shows/kidcast047.m4a

A picture is worth a thousand words… let’s prove it! Learning to describe what we observe in depth is a valuable skill that is connected to seeing and thinking more deeply. This episode will provide you with another great podcasting activity that will develop descriptive observation in your students. We’ll use photographs to create a guided visual tour in GarageBand.

For more great podcasting activities and lesson ideas checkout KidCast: Podcasting in the Classroom and Kidcast: Creative Podcasting Activities, Strateigies, and Ideas from FTC Publishing.

http://www.intelligenic.com/kidcast/shows/kidcast046.m4a

I’m back.  Thank you to all of your who contacted me over the course of the past semester.  I appreciate all the encouragement and support that continues to fly my way.   Life is really great right now and I’m looking forward to publishing more shows, connecting with more of you, and branching our conversations out into new directions.

This episode focuses on a strategy for developing interview skills among students. Its called speed networking and can be used to help students learn to hear several perspectives and record them for use in an investigative podcast.

http://www.intelligenic.com/kidcast/shows/kidcast045.m4a

To purchase both Kidcast Books, visit FTC Publishing - be sure to tell them that Dan sent you!  Remember, everytime a book is sold my dog, Jamal, gets a treat!

This is the handout for my presentation on constructive and creative with technology.

Creative Spaces in a Digital World

I also have a wiki space dedicated to this topic. Please consider dropping by and adding your two cents to the wiki.

http://creativespace.wikispaces.com/