The Prompt: Designing for Depth

The toughest point for many student podcasters is finding direction for the content of their work and getting started. If you’ve been reading or listening to me very long, you know that I’m not a fan of topical research which merely reports out facts. So to avoid it, I think teachers should take a page from language arts and spend some time crafting effective prompts. One of the ways to tell a great writing teacher is to see the way that they can pull thoughtfully crafted writing from the simplest of prompts. A good prompt is like a trigger that acts as a catalyst for academic or personal inquiry.

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