Podcasts!

Podcasts are a web based tool that both fascinates me and intimidates me in terms of use for education.  I’m not intimidated by using podcasts that have already been created others on the web.  Selecting those and using them is as easy as selecting appropriate movies or any other multimedia.  Using premade podcasts aren’t always the best option I think; sometimes customization is truly called for.  After looking at a few podcasts, a thing occurred to me that you should keep in mind both the audience and the goal when creating them.

The Grammar Girl podcasts for example are a great example of creating podcasts to give out handy tips.  One of the podcasts I want to create is advice for being successful in social studies, but I don’t want to necessarily use up a great deal of class time to do this.  Examples of this include test taking skills, writing skills, public speaking, and research skills.  These are skills that are vital not just in social studies but also later in life.  Unfortunately to cover those in class would eat up valuable instruction time that should really be spent on content.  So I want to create a podcast myself giving out these tips, Grammar girl and others on her site such as Legal Lad have a great model for such podcasts.  Their podcasts are many, because they focus on one topic and cover it in roughly 10 minutes.  Keeping the podcasts short and sweet helps prevent the listener’s attention from wondering.  The information is given and able to sink in without missing anything.  Should a topic require more attention a part two is always an option.  This mandates a break in between podcasts.  While it is true that you could pause a podcast when you need a break, it’s easy for a listener to try to power through the podcast or even forget that pausing is an option.  By separating the podcasts the break is required, and follows along the educational concept of 10 and 2.  For those of you who are not familiar with this idea, for every 10 minutes of information it’s important to stop and give the learner 2 minutes time to process that information. 

Another use for podcasts is to record class sessions and post them on the web.  The advantages of this are that students who are absent from class are able to make up for it better than just borrowing someone’s notes, and students can also listen to these podcasts as a tool for studying.  A white paper by Ashley Deal discussed how educators worry that posting lectures on the internet will lower the incentive for students to show up to class.  I thought to myself that this is possible, especially sine I am an auditory learner.  I enjoy listening to information and being able to pace, and I thought combining a freedom of movement at home with only having to hear a podcast would make for the ideal classroom experience for me.  To test this out I listened to a podcast of a lecture by Professor John Demos on “Religionand Witchcraft in Colonial America”.  While this is a topic I found interesting, I have to admit I had a hard time paying attention the entire time.  I don’t think that this was Professor Demos’ fault either; so much as I was listening to it on my computer, in my living room with my wife and son around.  Without being able to see any images that he makes mention to, or even watch for changes in his facial expressions, combined with my 2 year old’s uncanny ability to steal my attention, I quickly realized this was no replacement for attending the lecture.  Yes I know that not everyone has a 2 year old, and that some people will go someplace more distraction free then their living room when listening to these podcasts.  However while it may just be my opinion, the kind who will retreat to a distraction free environment to listen to a podcast are also the kind responsible enough to attend the lecture itself anyway.  Also like I mentioned before, without the ability to see the lecturer’s visuals, a student loses out on other educational points aside from just what was said.  While it’s easy to google an object like the jugs he talks about in the lecture, should he have shown any graphs, I would not be so able to find those.  Podcasts are great to help absent students or help with reviews, but remember that a different kind of delivery will be required should you wish to assign a podcast as an assignment to be listened to as homework.

For podcasts to be listened to add to the curriculum itself one has to make sure that it’s entertaining to listen to.  Mike Duncan I felt did a great job of this in his podcast about Roman history, though it’s not something I would recommend for a high school student.  The target audience for Duncan seemed to be adult history enthusiasts.  His podcasts were however meant to a series to educate listeners, and not just a recording of a class session.  He does not make mention to any, and instead uses his voice to describe everything he is conveying.  Also he keeps in mind that the listener is not going to witness any body language he may use, and instead takes time to change the tone of his voice to keep listeners attention.  His podcasts however do average about a half an hour, so there is a lot of information flying at the student, and much of the finer details will most likely be lost.  On a high school student this may demand too much, and the students probably should not be left to just take notes as they see fit.  Instead I would recommend handing out a worksheet of some sort that students must fill out, to ensure that the important (applicable to standardized tests for example) information is retained. 

I really like the idea of podcasts in an educational setting.  Much like the other web tools, it is important to remember who your listeners are, and what the goal is.  Podcasts feel like they could be too easily abused as a way to just claim that you’re using technology in a lesson plan.  If I just keep those two key pieces of information in mind, podcasts could be a lot of fun.

Podcast Lesson Idea 2

Title:  Rome's Greatest Hits 
SoL:  WHI.6e and 6f:  Students will know the changes in Roman culture and economy, and key events that led to the eventual end of the Roman Republic and the rise of the Roman Empire.
Web Tool: Podcasts

Other Skills Utilized:  Students will work on podcasting skills, as well as being familiar enough with historical events to be able to compare them to song lyrics.

Lesson Plan:  Students will have been creating podcasts for their history class for some time now.  For this podcast, students will be working alone.  They will be required to find a song where the lyrics could be said to describe the events occurring in Rome as the Republic gave way to the Roman Empire.  The students will play the song (as last I understood educational allows individuals to use materials for educational purposes).  Once the song is finished they will describe how each verse of the song relates to Rome at this period in its history.  The lyrics need not be literal, but in fact figures of speech such as metaphors are highly encouraged. 

Podcast Lesson Idea 1

Title: Time Report
SoL:  WHI.5c- Students will be familiar with the contrasting philosophies of government and cultural values within the Greek city states, most notably between Athens and its features of democracy, and Spartan oligarchy.  Students will understand what it meant to be a citizen in Greek society, and what rights that entails.
Web Tools:  Podcasts

Other Skills Utilized:  Students will practice creating podcasts, as well as collaboration, and debate skills.  Students will practice understanding other people’s cultures, and be able to use that to understand how others think. 

Lesson Plans:  Students will be placed into groups of three.  Then they will create a podcast series for each unit in 9^th grade global studies.  In this podcast they will have one person portray a modern America who is able to go back in time to interview various peoples through history (Never mind the linguistic barriers that would exist, we’ll add that to our suspension of disbelief!).  The time traveler has found an Athenian and a Spartan who are willing to discuss their cultures and systems of government.  The American is free to come up with various questions, and even mention a few features of modern American government and culture that these past Greeks my find interesting (or shocking).  The podcast will last for 15 minutes each.

Image Blog Lesson Plan 2

Title:  Virtual Museum
SoL:  9^th Grade History WHI.6J: Students will be able to cite various contributions made by Roman culture onto Western culture such as architecture, literature, technology, science, and medicine.
Web Tool:  Image Blogs

Other Skills:  Students will get practice with using the web to perform research, and practice with the use of creating image blogs to share information with the world.

Lesson Plan:  The students have been asked to create a “virtual museum” tour using an Image blog.  The set up will be that these “museums” will be created to help students who are unable to go on field trips to museums for one reason for another.  What they will do is surf the web looking for images that would represent their exhibits.  Then they will use the tag section function to point to various parts of the images and make notes explaining to the visitor what the exhibit is, and the important information they will need to take away from it.  In this case they will be working individually to construct series of 12 “exhibits” illustrating important impacts Rome made on modern Western culture.  These images will be posted in a series. 

Image Blog Lesson Plan 1

Title: Image Peer Review
SoL:  7^th Grade History GOVT.4c: Federalism, power is divided between the Federal and the State governments with this style of government. 

Other Skills: Students will get to practice research, and persuasive writing skills, as well as peer reviewing skills.  Students will learn how to open up to classmates and be able to take recommendations and decide if they have merit or not and how to act on them.  They will also learn how to give constructive criticism. 

Lesson Plan: Students will write a 5 page paper, where they decide the merits of a federalist government as America has it.  Should America shift to a Union government? Or should America give more power back to the States?  Students will write a rough draft of this paper, then post it up on Flickr.  From there they will select 2 partners to peer review their papers.  When peer reviewing they will use Flickr’s note function make notes on various sections of the paper with suggestions or comments that they feel will be useful.  These will be made in a way that only the 3 plus the teacher will be able to access and read.  Once the peer review is finished, they will then edit their papers as they see fit and hand it in as a final copy.

Image Blogs

Image blogs are a bit trickier to use in an educational setting, but with a bit more effort and creativity students could benefit from this aspect of the web as well.  While I read about image blogs in Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms, I think seeing a few of them brought them more to life. 

The first thing that struck me about image blogs is the potential that anyone can join along with them.  This comes in two ways, first there is the obvious point that if allowed anyone can upload photos into a group centered on a theme.  "The Red Rule" is an example of this, as I looked the photos were taken from all over the world, they just all had the color red as its main point (at least to me it felt like the centerpiece).  This could be useful for collaborative projects, but also I think it’s useful as a resource for pictures themselves.  Images can be a great way to spur a student’s interest; if they can actually see something it can become more real to them.  While it may be easy to use a search engine to find photos of historic events, when it comes to current events it can be a bit more difficult.  Flickr on the other hand can be a place to look, should important current events begin to unfold during a school year.  In fact I had noticed that a great deal of the photos in the “Red Rule” were under 2 hours old.  Attach key words in such groups to an RSS feed and a teacher has a great tool for showing their students the world. 

The other feature that I really liked was that people are able to comment on sections of a photo.  While I read about this feature, it stood out for me in the photo group “The Commons”.  This blog was created along with the Library of Congress to share public photographs.  When I read that you could comment on photos in Flickr, I thought about comments in the comment section much like a regular blog, then I also knew you could place comments on the photograph but for some reason I kept thinking that was more for the person who submitted the photo.  However on the Commons, there were plenty of photos were people selected sections of the pictures and left comments in regards to their thoughts, or to explain something.  While too many comments can make a picture hard to follow, I do think students being able to put a box over an area to pose a question or point something out can to the experience.  In this way the student is positive that what they are referencing on the photo is understood. 

Lastly much like my idea in regards for using a wiki to create a portfolio, Flickr can also serve the same purpose.  The teacher can take photos of various projects and have students use the commenting features to explain their projects.  As an example of this I looked at a 3^rd grade teacher who posted a picture of a student’s project on Flickr.  In this way a student can have a new goal in mind, aside from a good grade; they also have a chance to show off to la larger audience which can now include their parents and extended family.  I think posting pictures on the web could be akin to having your work posted on the family refrigerator.  This is a student’s time to shine, and having to perform for a greater audience (or getting to) may add an extra incentive to work hard on their project.

Wiki Portfolio Possiblities

     So for another use of Wiki's in an educational setting, I got to thinking how it could be used in a different form than just student collaboration (not that I'm insulting collaboration by any means).  One thing then occurred to me which was the VGLA.  This is an alternate assessment program for students who may not perform their best on standardized tests.  Instead the teacher is held responsible for creating a portfolio of the student's work over the year to show that they have mastered the year’s content.

    Wiki's would be a great asset for portfolio based assessment.  The reason for this is that a teacher or student can upload student's assignments to the wiki with little trouble, for safe keeping.  This makes storage or sending it to the grading committee a non-issue.  The teacher would be made the wiki’s moderator, so that the student free to contribute, and make alterations but at the end of the day the teacher is the one who decides wiki.  This prevents the student or anyone else from permanently altering any assignments once they have been submitted and finalized.  Also using a wiki allows a teacher to use more than just written assignments to show that a student understands the content.  Students could add podcasts as they talk about content, photos of visual based assessments, or even a teacher could video record skits and other performance based assessments and upload them onto the wiki.  Since the point of a portfolio based assessment is to allow for differentiation when grading a student, a wiki is definitely a way to allow this.

     Another great use for a wiki as a medium for a portfolio is that it is accessible for the student, teachers, and guardians to look at whenever they want.  This allows the involved to watch for student growth or trouble.  With the information only a few clicks away the student and guardians at the very least will be able to stay informed of student achievement before it is too late for any changes to occur.  I know that my parents would have loved to have been kept up to date on my progress, and would be sure to alter my behaviors if progress was not being made. The benefit for teachers extends to more than just the teacher for that year.  Teachers who have the student the next year could also benefit from seeing a student's work the year prior.  In this way they can better prepare for the student's strengths, weaknesses and maybe able to notice trends before the student has left their class for the year.

     In the end, I think that a wiki has amazing potential for use in an educational setting.  They could be used as a project based assessment to make sure that a student has mastered a certain SoL.  They also can be used in a setting such as portfolios to monitor progress, and ensure that a student is taking in more than just one unit's worth of SoL's.