So what does a good prompt look like?

a premise + a question + a constructive task

This semester we have learned that fresh water is perhaps the most valuable of our natural resources. How might our relationship with water change over the next 25 years in order to ensure access to fresh water? What is at stake? Create a short podcast episode that will begin a discussion of water conservation with your audience. Explain your ideas with vocabulary, ideas and examples from history and current events. Your 3 minute response to this assignment will be published as an episode in a series you will build upon

The prompt is very important, but so is the scaffolding that follows it. Stay tuned for more entries on each of these steps.

• The brainstorming process
• the introspection
• finding significance in the topic
• the research to substantiate a point of view or find kindred thinkers
• the organization of ideas
• and building the narrative from which your ideas find a digestible form for your audience

“The web is for scanning, not deep reading. People typically spend two minutes or less on a site. Why do you think the killer app is called a browser?”  - How tablets will change magazines, books and newspapers, Fortune, Feb 2010

I was reading this morning about potential changes to the publishing world as mobile devices such as the iPad become mainstream tools.  I was struck by Josh Quittner’s dilemma as a writer.  His writing’s depth was somehow sacrificed, or at the very least altered, when it moved online.   The browser/scanner modality of reading made it harder to go deep and tie together a longer narrative.   Even as I made my way through the article I had a sort of “meta moment” when I realized I was doing exactly this same type of superficial scanning as I moved through it.

I compared the experience of scanning an article to the experience of listening to a podcast episode.  I had just finished listening to the 400th episode of This American Life and I was struck with cognitive difference in the two experiences.   As I listened, I allowed for every word, interaction, and the expressive elements in the podcasters voice, as well as the ambient sounds and music that helped build the story.  I experienced the full “article” as the authors had intended and edited.

We often approach modality and media as a buffet of equal choices.  Some people are just visual or auditory learners…and the like.  Certainly, I am not completely objective on the matter being a decidedly auditory learner myself.   However, I wondered if the nature of our relationship with media has changed the way that we approach different modalities.   In other words, if we are really interested in delivering salient details, perhaps we had better consider audio and video formats as primary vehicles for instructional support?

However, the answer isn’t to just jump to audio or video modes.  The answer is to mix the media – to listen AND read AND respond.

1.  Set things up by giving the students a significant and interesting task to complete

2.  Provide students with the media that supports the information and knowledge requirements of the task.  If possible provide a text transcript or printed material (including images, charts and graphs) that help conceptualize what they are hearing and seeing.

3.  Prompt the students to stop the video/audio whenever they need to take some notes or just jot down a new idea.

4.  Debrief – Give the students an opportunity to summarize and critique the important details of what they experienced.  Specifically, what differentiates this idea from others?  What is the “tricky part” of this concept?  How is this significant to us?

3.  Give the students adequate time to experience the media and the reading.

Okay, now that we have semantics and pronunciation out of the way, I actually have a lot of ideas about video podcasting – - even for someone who is almost completely podcasts in a simple audio format.  Check out this episode to hear me try to dispel some myths about video podcasting, explore some ideas about what makes a good podcast, and give you some ideas about managing the video podcasting process.

To help differentiate between the video podcast and audio podcast it may be helpful to consider some factors that can influence whether you make a move to video.   Here are some indicators that point toward the video podcast format:

• The nonverbal interactions between subjects provide significant information to the audience
• The content requires a visual model to scaffold understanding
• You are providing demonstrations on procedures that include motion
• If your audience is most likely to access your content from in front of their computer, television (Apple TV or Tivo) or on a portable media player (iPod)

What’s the minimal equipment necessary to do a vodcast?

You can record video very easily with a built in web cam and software bundled with your computer.  For example, iMovie on the Macintosh platform provides a very quick and professional recording and production environment complete with titles, transitions, and video effects like picture in picture and green screens.

How do you suggest people get started beyond learning the basics of the equipment? Should it be a series, a blog gig, a specific project covering a single unit of curriculum, or something else?

A video podcast can emerge as a solution when you need it.  Podcasts don’t have to fall squarely into one category of media, the content can dictate when a video might be more appropriate than an enhanced podcast or an audio podcast.

Any advice on divvying up the work among students? And what role should the teacher play?

Think of yourself as an executive producer.  Your job is to pull together the technical resources, guide the research and creative process and help remove barriers. The mistake that many teacher make is to confuse their role and take over the actual production.  That turns the podcast into an synthetic academic exercise, rather than an authentic research and communication experience.

Where should the videos be posted? Is there a problem with putting them on youtube?

I generally encourage podcasters to post their material in the most flexible and widely accepted formats.  This allows the audience to experience them in whatever medium makes sense for them.  For video, I recommend the MPEG-4 (H.264) formats because they provide really great video and much smaller data rates.  These formats are also compatible with the iTunes and iPod ecosystem; where a large segment of podcasting and educational media is distributed and consumed.  Creating your podcast in other formats creates additional work for you when you try to pull your content into the systems and formats your audience will be using.

What about YouTube?  Once considered the wild west of video, it is starting to offer educators more and more reasons to take a second look as a place to store and organize content.  The two big benefits of YouTube are storage and embeddibility.  In terms of storage, the sky is the limit!  YouTube doesn’t limit the amount of content you post.  Their video upload tool does, however limit your files to 1GB in size and 10 minutes in length.

As for embeddibility,  I’m not really sure whether it is actually a word, but I’m going to use it anyway.  For podcasters that want to syndicate their media mostly for web consumption and hope to “go viral” and get their work embedded within the blogs, twitters, wikis, and web pages of other users, YouTube provides the easiest way for others to grab your video and make it part of their own stream of content.

The limitation of YouTube is that downloading the content you post can only be played back within the Flash based player in a web browser.  There isn’t a built in  video download option to allow users to take the content with them on an iPod, iPhone or other media player.  Google has been experimenting with this functionality during the spring of 2009, but has yet to pull it into widespread use.

Part of the challenge that some podcasting teachers and students face is storage and network speed.  Storage should become less and less of an issue as technical improvements continue to push the cost of memory down.   In some districts, arbitrary storage limits are put in place that have little to do with the actual needs of technical realities of users.  My advice is to have a conversation with your campus administrator and your technology director about what your are trying to do academically through your show.  Chart a path that includes the skills you are going to develop, the standards your students are going to be meeting, and the technical needs you are anticipating.   By making the case from an academic point of view, you’ll get farther with your technical arguments.

What’s the most common mistake that newbies make in introducing vodcasting into the classroom – and how can that be prevented?

• Not considering the audience as one of the first steps in developing their show
• Thinking of discrete, individual topics, rather than a larger scholarly exploration of related questions
• Putting too much time and emphasis on the production, and not enough on the quality of content and conversation in the production.
• Letting questions of safety and security derail the process.  Be upfront and communicate with administrators and parents about how you plan to protect identity and personal information.  Be creative with your production.  Talking heads aren’t as interesting and are a less secure approach to student produced video.
• Preview and review EVERYTHING before posting it.  The teacher must remain the gatekeeper for the safety, truth, copyright compliance and integrity.
• Reflect on your work – try to pull new ideas for continual improvement by watching and  listening to your show with a focus on constructive critique.  Also, become a subscriber to other student produced shows.  Compare and contrast your approaches and your strengths.
• Take it easy.  Start small and allow yourself and your students to grow into their scholarly and technical skills.

kidcast62.m4a

• Develop a short survey related to an issue you are exploring.  For example, if your students were producing a podcast episode around the question, “What impact do recycling programs have on landfills?”  You could survey students’ families on
  • Do you participate in a recycling program at home?
  • How often is your recycling picked up?
  • Can you estimate the volume of recyclable materials you put out each week? (hint: the volume of the container provided by our local program is about 7.5 gallons)
  • What factors influence whether you will recycle?
• Find explore primary source or “raw data” source to give you statistics.  For example, if you are exploring changes in state demographics, you might look to a government census bureau website, like the U.S. Census Bureau.
• If you produce your show as a class or divide responsibilities among groups of students, assign a group of students to be in charge of researching or collecting meaningful stats related to your research question.  They collect data, move it into clear tables or charts and then provide an initial summary of what it says.

A Mini Series would likely have:

1. A consistent set of music, artwork and formats.  You want the series to be identified as a set with a sense of unity.  If the series is a special project of an ongoing podcast, tie your show’s identity pieces (logos, etc) together with the special artwork of the mini series.
2. An introductory episode that details the scope of the series.  What question(s) will you be exploring?  What will listeners be able to take away from the experience?  What can they look forward to in upcoming episodes?
3. An episode for each of the central questions or angles you or your students explore.
4. A summary show co hosted by all the contributors in which the lessons of the previous episodes can be tied together.

Just a few examples of mini series we brainstormed:

• Animal Adaptations – How does an environment affect animal apprearance or the way they behave? 
• Life Cycles – How do animals grow and change throughout their lives?  Are there similarities between different animal life cycles?
• The Census – Why is the census important to our government?  What can we learn about the past and future by looking at census data?
• 10 Inventions that Changed the World
• Creative writing – telling a story as a serial
• Pillars of Character
• Community Institutions
• Biographies

Getting quality content that meshes well with your curriculum is only half that battle. In this episode we’ll talk about active engagement while listening to or watching podcasts. Special thanks to Stef Paramoure of Canyon Middle School in New Braunfels, TX for her inspiration for this topic!

Tune in for 6 strategies for engaging students as they listen to podcasts!

http://www.intelligenic.com/kidcast/shows/kidcast59.m4a

http://www.intelligenic.com/kidcast/shows/kidcast58.m4a

Be sure to check out the entry form for the 2008 KidCast Awards!  The deadline is approaching – Nov 15, 2008!

As you organize your ideas into a podcast series, it makes sense to define just what you aspire to reach with your show.  This definition can come in the form of a rubric that lays out exactly what it looks like.  You can start by asking some essential questions:

• What constitutes a great show?
• What does it sound like?
• How does the conversation flow?
• How is content organized?
• How do I want my audience members to feel?
• How can I engage them into my conversation?

Answering those questions might be easier by actively listening to some sample shows that are similar to your own.  In this episode, I’ll give you a couple of strategies for using active listening to help build a trajectory to excellence in podcasting.

Kidcast #57

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

Kidcast #55

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.

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.

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

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 

• 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

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

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

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!

Download the episode as an MP3

This episode was recorded using Ubercaster, a full featured podcast studio that offers some great work flows and creative options for podcasters. It takes some serious horse power and a lot of preparation (which is actually a great thing!) Ubercasters gets you to think about podcasting as a performance as much as a production. You can download a demo at ubercaster.com

Mothers day is just around the corner, so I decided to throw in a little podsafe music, “Mother”, from Kevin Reeves.

There has been a bit of a backlash lately toward the iPod. I think most of it is drummed up media hype, but it is important to address these kinds of concerns by engaging administrators and teachers about how to address cheating and appropriate use through effective classroom management not knee jerk generalizations.

I end this episode with a sound seeing tour from Massacre Canyon in south west Nebraska. I love discovering cool little piece of history like this and it gave me an excellent change to bring out the iPod and do a soundseeing tour.

Listen – Subscribe

Special thanks to our platinum sponsor Humble Daisy: makers of ProfCast. Our other sponsor is Atomic Learning. They are helping to bring this great contest together and are providing some great prizes! Including:

Student Prizes:

• a handsome trophy for the winner of each student category
• a single user license of ProfCast for each student winner’s classroom
• a copy of my book – Kidcast: Podcasting in the Classroom

Teacher Prizes:

• a handsome trophy for the winner of each teacher category
• a 500 seat license of ProfCast for each teacher winner’s school
• a copy of my book – Kidcast: Podcasting in the Classroom
• the winner in the professional development category will also get a one year subscription to Atomic Learning.

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It’s a very exciting time…watching all this great work fly in…knowing all the creative and constructive energy that goes into it. Thank you to all the vangards out there who are making podcasting happen in your classrooms.
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The 2nd Edition of KidCast Podcasting in the Classroom….FINISHED IT!
- GarageBand’s Podcasting Studio
- Video Podcasting (including Video Cue Pro)
- more ideas about student voice and the fundamentals of podcasting
-It is available online at ftcpublishing.com – they have some great bundles – and they can even sell your district a license so that you can reproduce it for staff development within your district.

CURRENTLY working on a companion to that book that is a resource and activity book for classroom podcasts – it has over 50 ideas, strategies and Activities “KidCast: Creative Podcasting” – Look for this title out later this spring.

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I went down to Florida last week to speak on a panel at the Technology and Learning, Tech Forum 2007 Orlando. I spoke with David Warlick and Ginger Jewell about new technologies that are changing education. We took a really fun round robin approach to chiming in with exmples and ideas about collaboration, student publishing and creation, and immersive simulations and games. I popped my iPod on the table and recorded – most of the session – i’ll post it as a separate show.
—-
Ubercaster – a new tool that i’m going to review soon. – go check it out, mac users. I’d be interested in what you think about this.
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Videos from the Carrollton Farmers Branch Beyond 4 Walls keynote in Dallas are back up… update your feed (or resubscribe) to get them
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Podcasting and ELL – Allison Wimmer, who is an amazing foreign language teacher has a request for us – she’s doing some research and is looking for resources and ideas about blogging, podcasting and ELL. Email her at wimalim@gmail.com
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Two Minute SoapBox is a new collaborative podcast for teachers about teaching produced….you guessed it…by teachers. Make a short recording and email it to me at dschmit@intelligenic.com or just call (309)401-9353 and leave a posting as a voice mail.

Please share this information to educators who are producing podcasts as a part of their professional work.

This year we are dividing our contest into categories that focus on specific types of educational podcasting. Here are the categories:

Student Categories

• Documentary (i.e. research findings, biography, exposé)
• Talk Show (i.e. discussion, analysis)
• Drama (i.e. radio plays that teach)
• Sound Seeing Tour (i.e. descriptive language to introduce a place or objects)
• Where in the World (best new episode of Where in the World)
• Best in Show – This award recognizes the student podcast which exemplifies the qualities we value most in podcasts: learning, research, creativity, quality media production, and sustainability.

Teacher Categories

• Professional Development (i.e. teacher reflection, tips, strategies, research summaries)
• Instructional Materials ( i.e. study guide, process guides, guided learning)

While our prize vault is still growing, the prizes include

Student Prizes:

• a handsome trophy for the winner of each student category
• a single user license of ProfCast for each student winner’s classroom

Teacher Prizes:

• a handsome trophy for the winner of each teacher category
• a 500 seat license of ProfCast for each teacher winner’s school

Click here for all the details and the entry form…

Episode 40 – Listen

Photo Story

Overall, I was a little underwhelmed by Photo Story. The process is fairly straightforward, with options to edit photos, set panning and zooming on photos, add effects, add music and record narration. Recording narration was easy,but editing and creative choices seem a little limited. I used my Samson CO1U microphone. There were a few issues in getting the program to recognize my microphone, but after a few tweaks (!) it worked.

The output of Photo Story leaves us trapped inside Microsoft-land – WMV. Luckily there is a freeware application that can help us – Jodix

Jodix can easily convert a variety of different media formats into an iPod compatible format. For podcasters working with software limited to exporting to Windows Media formats, this is an essential piece of software.

http://www.intelligenic.com/kidcast/shows/032307_kidcast.m4a

iStories at Apple Learning Interchange

Radio Rookies

Innertoob.com and Crowdabout.us

Episode 38 – Listen

One of the advantages of podcasting over radio, is that it offers outlets for participation. But podcasts aren’t generally live events. There is a time shift between creation of the show and when the listener experiences it. So, how can we still offer audiences interactive experiences that make our audiences more community-like, more involved, more connected, and more engaged.

Listen in for ideas about creating a feedback loop (and a great source for new content!) and encouraging more participation from your listeners.

TIP: If you are working in an enhanced podcast format, be sure to create a chapter called Subscribe and position it where you remind people to subscribe to your show. You can create a link for that chapter that begins with the prefix itpc:// instead of http:// this will create a one click subscription link to your show (or other shows you might talk about) for your audience. Perhaps they are listening on the web…..this way you may be able to make it easier for them to be regular listeners.

A few referenced links:

Skypecasting

Where in the World

Two Cents from Teachers (coming soon)
FTC Publishing (for information on my books)

http://www.intelligenic.com/kidcast/shows/011707_kidcast.m4a

Adelaide is a beautiful city with incredibly friendly people, great restaurants, and lots of fun places to hang out and experience the rich culture of Australia. I was especially impressed with the teachers and students who participated in my master class and workshops. The students were very articulate and creative and had LOTS of great ideas for launching their very own podcasts. They were also some of the most polite students I have ever run across. From the 1st year students all the way up to the year 12 students, I received warm “welcomes”, hand shakes and “thank you’s” from nearly every student. The people of Adelaide are a class act!
The master class and workshops were sponsored by the Technology School of the Future (TSOF). This is a fantastic organization chocked full creative and professional (and FUN!) people focused on bringing technology into the learning experiences of children in South Australia.
Karen Church was our main contact with TSOF and she treated me and my friend Tom, who was nice enough to travel with me all the way around the world, like royalty! Karen, along with Peter, Jim, James, Richard, Enver, and many others were a great team and took care of every detail you could imagine. We also got to meet up with Karen’s family for a day at the Cleland Wildlife Reserve where we had our first close encounters with Kangaroos, a Koala (named Banjo!), Wombats, Emus and other assorted Aussie creatures. We also spent a great afternoon tasting wines in the Barossa Valley region just outside of Adelaide. Beautiful places. Wonderful people. Did I mention it was also SUMMER there!?

Thank you Karen and all the wonderful people we met along our travels! We can’t wait to come back again someday.

If you have some ideas you would like to share, please feel free to drop me a line at dschmit@intelligenic.com or call my listener line at 1-(831) 303-2994.

You can view the video here.

Thanks to Maria Henderson of Apple Computer and the technology team at Carrollton-Farmers Branch for inviting me to share the day with their participants.

Special thanks to Richard Sands of the Technology Services Division at Carrollton-Farmers Branch ISD for taping the presentation and making it available.

Click Here for the Video

I’m using gcast.com to create these phonecasts. I tried out several of the phonecasting services we spoke about on the show last week and this one was the most straightforward and easy to post. So, click this link to subscribe to my special marathon podcast. It should launch iTunes and subscribe to the podcast for you. Be sure to update often on Sunday Oct 22 and 29 to catch the latest in running and cramping.

Download Show Kidcast Episode: Off to the Races!

So, I was nervous. What a relief it what is when I saw 200 plus smiling faces that seemed to be interested in what I had to say. My presentation was focused on making a connection about the potential of podcasting to enhance the experience of mathematics educators and mathematics students. After all, isn’t that what were really about? We don’t do what we do just for the sake of technology. We don’t spend hours producing, podcasts just to prove that we can do it. We are all working to find you applications for podcasting because we believe they can enhance the experience the student. I believe that when students create authentic products like podcasts, they’re getting a taste of what is like to be a creative professional. They’re exploring their voices, their ideas, and their understandings in order to fulfill and outside mission.

I will admit that when I first learned about podcasting, math wasn’t the first subject I thought about. My mind actually went toward social studies, language arts, foreign language, business education, music, and even science. But math? As it turns out, there are whole lot of applications for podcasting in mathematics.

One of the most exciting applications that we talked about was the use of a professional organization like NATM as a network of professionals who are all pulling together their best practice and their best ideas into a single channel as a distributed professional development channel.

Another idea that I shared with the group was the idea of using smart board technology as basis of a video podcast. Smart boards allow teachers to record both their voice and writing on a smartboard as a movie. This approach will allow teachers to share the steps required to solve a problem or given the opportunity to describe a concept in both of verbal and a visual way.

We also considered student created podcasts including examples of sports shows with a statistics focus, math exposés, math quiz shows, and podcast dramas with a math focus. I even got to meet one of our podcast drama winners from last spring, Angela Mosier of Westside Middle School in Omaha, Nebraska. Her students had produced a great set of podcast dramas that illustrated scientific notation and exponents.

All in all, I’d calculate the day to be both productive and fun.

As some of you know, I have a listener line that I use to get feedback and questions from my listseners. I figured out a way to move these voice messages onto my iPod. So, I had this great idea. Why don’t I get my friends and family to call the number and leave me messages to listen to while I run my marathons. Essentially, I want to take you on my run with me. Call (831) 303-2994 and leave me a message. So take a minute, pick up the phone and call.
- Share a story about your own experiences with people battling cancer.
- Share some words of encouragement for the long run!
- Tell me a joke!
- Read me a poem.
- Or just say hello.

Are you aware of the potential for using cell phones as podcasting devices?.

I did an activity on September 11th, where I asked my students to reflect on where they were 5 years ago on Sept 11. I also asked them to reflect on how they processed that day and what they think it all means 5 years later. ODEO.COM’s phonecasting service allowed me to give my students a number and have them call and leave a voice message with their responses to my questions. Their call was recorded, compressed and added automatically to an RSS feed! Genius! This gave me some of the best quality reflections I have ever pulled from my students.

ODEO is not going to offer the phone service for much longer, however, you can check out gabcast, gcast, or hipcast as alternatives.

The kids are coming! Are you ready for the new school year? Why not start the year off with some new school year resolutions? Find a new podcast for yourself from the 60,000 available online! Explore a “quickcast” to share with your students each day.

Have you polled your students to see how many of them know about podcasting? What do they know about it? How do they perceive themselves? Consumers or producers or both?

My TEAM in Training marathon preparation is still going strong. Thanks to everyone who has donated to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. If you would like to make a donation, or to catch up on my progress, visit:

http://www.active.com/donate/tntne/tntneDSchmit

On the show I will discuss odeo.com as a one stop solution for podcasting that removes many of the technical barriers to getting a podcast online. I love this site and the features keep getting better all the time. Go Evan and crew!

I will also explore how to begin designing a podcast project for a grant or initiative within your school. There are lots of important questions to consider, be sure to ground your ideas in solid planning.

Be sure to check out my posting of windows podcasting applications. You may find a new tool or two.

We’ll also tackle one of those key questions that those beyond the bleeding edge of technology are starting to ask. Does this really improve learning? How?

The kids are coming! Are you ready for the new school year? Why not start the year off with some new school year resolutions? Find a new podcast for yourself from the 60,000 available online! Explore a “quickcast” to share with your students each day.

Have you polled your students to see how many of them know about podcasting? What do they know about it? How do they perceive themselves? Consumers or producers or both?

My TEAM in Training marathon preparation is still going strong. Thanks to everyone who has donated to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. If you would like to make a donation, or to catch up on my progress, visit:

http://www.active.com/donate/tntne/tntneDSchmit

On the show I will discuss odeo.com as a one stop solution for podcasting that removes many of the technical barriers to getting a podcast online. I love this site and the features keep getting better all the time. Go Evan and crew!

I will also explore how to begin designing a podcast project for a grant or initiative within your school. There are lots of important questions to consider, be sure to ground your ideas in solid planning.