Podcasting

Wow!  The students on these podcasts were so cute!  I imagine that they were so excited to being doing something public and so “official.”  I can’t believe that the Willowdale kids were only in the first grade.  I can only begin to imagine the planning that had to go into that lesson!  There must have been some sort of rubric to make it easier for the kids to plan such as roles (narrator, etc.) and things to cover.   I wonder if the other kids in the class did a project on the same topic or on something else.  

I also listened to “I’m Bringing Vocab Back” and I have to admit that I just stared at the screen with my mouth open trying to figure out what was going on.  I chose to write on another podcast instead.    

I browsed the Our City website for a while.  After coming across similar themes in many of the podcasts, I figured there had to be a reason why, so I downloaded their planning packet, which is great!  It delivers a great answer to the questions I posted above (about rubrics).  Aside from simply making it easier for the teacher to plan the podcasting assignment, I think this is a great tool for comparing and contrasting.  Instead of having to sift through the information, the children know that while listening to the “Climate Corner” section will tell them about the weather and “Famous Friends” will teach them something about well- known people that have come from the place.  Using that information, they can compare and contrast their city with many others.  While most of the schools are in the continental US, there is also a school in Hawaii and one in St. Thomas, giving the children a broader perspective.
    
Some of the teachers handled the assignment in different ways.  I noticed that in Memphis, they split up their segment into 12 parts so that the students worked in pairs or trios.  While that seems to be an effective way of giving all of the students an active role in the podcasts, it was a bit intimidating to see so many projects.  
    
It will be interesting to see the direction that this site goes in.  A lot of us have talked about working in international schools so there are lots of possibilities!  I could definitely see myself doing something like this in the future.  It could be broken up in many little sections that are cross-curricular.  The Our City project incorporates Science, Economics, Geography, History, Language Arts (writing the script and comparing and contrasting cities), and of course, technology.  Since you can upload pictures, incorporating art or art history would be feasible as well.