KidCast: Learning and Teaching with Podcasting

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 Dorely Zoo”, or the “Joselyn Art Museum”. Compared to the mundane school room these were amazingly exotic places. This episode will highlight some strategies an...more

Recently, my friend and colleague, Dr. Guy Trainin stopped by my office and we started talking about the podcasts. He mentioned a podcast that he discovered from Penn State called 60 second lectures. I thought, Catchy name…probably worth checking out. So I did a search and found more than just a podcast with a catchy title. I found a new form that was as beneficial, from a learning point of view, to the writer as it was the listener. During this episode, we’ll explore this form and th...more

This week I sat down with two soon to be podcasters Jarred and Dale, who also happen to be pre service educators at the University where I work. They have some great ideas for a new podcast and are getting very close to being ready to launch it. We decided to record our conversation about what they hope to accomplish, the plans they have made, and questions they are still working through. I think it is an interesting conversation that may help inform some of our own conversations about our po...more

The word argument has become a dirty word, it seems. It conjures up images of angry faces and unrest. We are here today to clear the name of the "argument" and bring it back to class. You see, without arguments, facts lack organization to take a stand. Arguments give rise to point of view and illumination. 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 de...more

The details of a idea or the steps in a process are sometimes lost in our personal perspective. We make assumptions about what people know or how they will need to build upon foundational knowledge in order to really understand what we are presenting in our podcasts. This episode of Kidcast will explore some activities for developing sequence, priority, and articulation of detail.

Buried deep within the Applications folder on Macintosh computers running the 10.5, or Leopard, operating system, is a small un assuming little application called “Podcast Capture”. This little app is the client side of an extremely powerful, game changing, system called Podcast Producer. By itself, the application is useless. But with an account on a Leopard Server, it becomes a streamlined conduit that gives users a fast and easy way to create video, audio, screencast podcast episodes and ...more

Recently I had the opportunity to meet Richard Dryfus. Yes...that Richard Dryfus. He was at the MacWorld conference working as a part of the John Lennon Educational Bus. Richard was there working with a group of students and recording content focused on bringing Civics curriculum back to the forefront in American schools. In many districts Civics has been reduced to a single course. In a crowded curriculum continually being driven by testing, what is the case for allocating more time and...more

A picture is worth a thousand words... let’s prove it! Learning to describe what we observe in depth is a valuable skill that is connected to seeing and thinking more deeply. This episode will provide you with another great podcasting activity that will develop descriptive observation in your students. We'll use photographs to create a guided visual tour in GarageBand.

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.