Podcast in Education

   This next assignment on podcasting is something I have used before in my classroom. Podcasting is like having your own online radio show. You can record yourself and/or your students reading, singing, talking, or discussing literature and post it online for others to hear. I have used other teacher's podcasts several times when I needed books read aloud. Students would listen to the read-aloud of a novel or book while in a workstations. I didn't need to purchase or record it myself. It was already available for use. I did a little researching and googling and found more uses of podcasting.  One is  having students record their own stories. This would be very motivating and exciting.  Once students hear their stories aloud, they can begin to revise and edit it to make it better. Once published to sound cloud, their recordings can be heard by friends and families. Having students, librarians, or teachers create podcasts, we can have a huge library of audio books for download, free of charge.  Another fun idea is to have your students create a talk show discussing research, interviews, and book reviews. The entire school can hear their production on the announcements. Podcasting is a great avenue for auditory learners. My ESL learners can benefit by listening to podcasts and creating podcasts as well. Publishing a readers theatre performance would encourage my average or below readers to practice their lines repeatedly since they know it is going to be publish and available for others to hear. If I can get them to practice their repeated readings, then their fluency will improve. And speaking of fluency, when students take their monthly fluency assessment where they read for one minute, parents/students would be able to hear exactly what they sound like and improve upon their fluency and prosody.  I really like the podcasting idea that students can  interview relatives about their life histories, and then combine the audio interview with family photos in a video project.
For more ideas go to: 

 http://edtechteacher.org/tools/multimedia/podcasting/

   I made  podcast of myself reading the book, "My Pet Book" by Bob Staake.  My plan is to have my students listen to the audio version of this book, then they will read it to a friend, and  finally read it independently.