Week 3 - Zealous for Podcasting

I've become fascinated with this idea of podcasting in the classroom. There are so many avenues that it could open up for students, and I am eager to start exploring what those might be! I got so inspired today, I created an account on anchor and got to work on the settings for next year's podcast. You can view the public website here, although there are no episodes just yet.



One of the things I love about Passion Projects is that they can evolve over time, as new ideas come to the forefront and replace an initial thought. Although I began this Passion Project as a way to explore PBL in Healthy Living, I am very pleased with this shift to podcasting as my main focus. Students, if you're reading this, it is SUPER if your general Passion Project idea evolves into something more specific and inspiring to you. Please don't ever feel like you have to stick with what you said on the first week, just because that's what you said you would do. The greatest ideas grow out of thinking, pondering, wondering, thinking some more, experimenting, trying... your first idea does not have to be your last!

Notes for myself :

- find some podcasts appropriate for students to listen to, and schedule time to do so at the start of the year (go for a walk!)
- develop a structure/schedule that is consistent and sustainable
- record an introductory episode
- ask grade 7 students for input before the end of the year
- Which subjects do I want to link this to - Healthy Living / Français / ELA? Others?
- What format am I looking at? Informative? Story telling? A combination?
- What about students who are anxious about sharing their voice?

Week 2 - Podcasting as PBL

I've been mulling ideas over in my head for the past while, thinking about what needs improvement in the way I already do Project Based Learning in my class. One of the phases of PBL that I need more work on is having students share their results with an authentic audience. So often, the audience for student work is contained to the school, or even to the smaller population of the individual classroom, and this can result in students' having the impression that their work "doesn't matter" in the grand scheme of things. As a teacher, I want to provide more opportunities for reaching a wider audience.



One way I am doing that with this years batch of Passion Projects is to have students create blogs that are published and available online for anyone to view. Students can view the blogs of others in the class, but there is also the potential for them to share their blogs on the own social media, with their parents, or with anyone who happens across their blog. This means I will spend time giving explicit guidelines for what should or should not appear on a blog of this sort (i.e. a school-based blog), how to comment appropriately and effectively on others' blogs, and how to format a blog so that it is as appealing as possible to the audience.

Students have created their blogs already, and will be updating them periodically over the next 8 weeks (and beyond, if their project continues after the "deadline") Students, if you would like to put a different title please send an email to let me know!

Tanisha - Makeup
Alex - Flamethrower
Kate - Fixing/Rebuilding a Bike
Ryland - Potato Launcher
Cole - Lego
Makayla - Getting in Shape
Emily - Learning songs on the Guitar
Emma - Nature Photography
Aidan - Free Throws
Maddy - Learning to play Violin
Monica - Cooking
Kalan - Building a little house
Skye - Learning Italian
Carmen - Composing music
Milo - Learning Norwegian
Adrianna - Protecting Sea Turtles
Julian - Cardboard Projectiles
Nash - Creating a Painting
Luc - Smoke Bomb
Adam - Creating a Rap/Hip-Hop Song
Amelia - Learning German 
Stuart - Food Delivery Robot
Ryan - Homemade Go-Kart 

However, this week 2 blog post was not intended to be about blogging, but about another way of sharing out to a wider audience : podcasting! (Funny how you can get off-topic and still be accomplishing your goal - students, take note!)



Next year, I would like to work on using PBL consistently in Healthy Living. Many of the topics in the curriculum lend themselves well to discussions, opinions, advice, and fact sharing. A podcast can be used for all of those things, and more. I have some more thinking about how to structure this, but my initial thoughts are that students could work in small groups to create a podcast episode about a topic of their choice in the curriculum. They could interview experts, invite special guests, share their thoughts and opinions, and then publish using an app such as Anchor or something similar. I would host the podcast, so that all student work would be gathered in one place. I would also love to do some mini-episodes myself on the weeks when students are not responsible for a contribution. 

Lots to think about, and I want to do some research into how this could work, starting with the article Project Audio : Teaching Students How to Produce Their Own Podcasts.