Today I finished making my first podcast. The process was very time consuming and somewhat frustrating, but now that I am finally done, I am happy with the final product and I think it might be something that I will use in with my classes in the future. My podcast is about George Washington and while watching, kids will travel into the past and visit the time when George Washington lived. The "time machine" makes a total of 4 stops: 1732 - the year when Washington was born, 1740 - George Washington's childhood, 1776 - the beginning of the war against England, and 1789 - the year Washington became President. In correlation with VA social studies SOLs K.1a, 1.2, and 2.11, my podcast emphasizes George Washington's role as an important leader for helping the Americans win their freedom from England and then helping to create the new nation and explains that this is why he is often called the "Father of Our Country". The podcast also defines several vocabulary words, including past, colony, and hero, and would be a fun way for kids to review a unit on George Washington or the colonial/Revolutionary War era.
Overall, the podcasting experience was not as hard as I thought it would be. It was definitely very time consuming, but I think the process will go quite a bit faster the next time I do it now that I know what I am doing. The biggest challenge I had while creating this podcast was finding access to a Mac computer to use Garage Band (the software program our class used for making the podcasts). Another issue was the click, click, click sound that my uncle has informed me is the metronome sound. I originally had no idea what that even was, but I have now figured out that the way to prevent this sound from being part of all voice recordings in the podcast is to hold down the "Apple" key and the "U" key to toggle whether or not the metronome is turned on BEFORE you begin recording. Once the recordings have been done with that sound turned on, however, there does not seem to be any way to get rid of it. And unfortunately, because of my limited access to the Mac computers, re-recording the entire podcast with the metronome turned off was not an option. So, my podcast has a little clicking sound as "background music", but for the future (and for any reader's information too) I have learned how to avoid this from happening again by making sure that the metronome is turned off before starting to record. The final challenge came when I exported my podcast to iTunes last night and discovered that it was twice as long as I thought it was. Since our assignment was to make a podcast that was 3-5 minutes long and my podcast was now 6 minutes, I decided to try to shorten it. In the process of doing this, I also figured out how to "delete and move" a section from the middle of the podcast so that I would not then have to drag each individual part to the left - and that discovery saved me a lot of valuable time.
I think I probably will create more podcasts in the future. They are certainly a great tool to be able to use in the classroom and since they include both pictures and sound recordings, they are a good way to reinforce concepts for both visual and auditory learners. I think it would also be fun for my students to make their own podcasts as well. When I was searching online to get ideas for my podcast, most of the podcasts that I found had been created by elementary school students - and some of them were really good too! For example, here are links to a podcast about butterfly life cycles made by 1st graders and to Radio WillowWeb, which contains over 30 podcasts created by 1st through 5th grade students at Willowdale Elementary School. As we have discussed in my technology class, elementary school students would be excited to be able to record their own work and then post it on the class web page or blog. This would also be a good opportunity for parents to see what their kids are doing in class. Having students create podcasts at the end of a unit would be a great way for the teacher to assess what they have learned about that topic. By the time they finished making their podcasts, the students would also have a good understanding of whatever subject their podcast is about.
Overall, the podcasting experience was not as hard as I thought it would be. It was definitely very time consuming, but I think the process will go quite a bit faster the next time I do it now that I know what I am doing. The biggest challenge I had while creating this podcast was finding access to a Mac computer to use Garage Band (the software program our class used for making the podcasts). Another issue was the click, click, click sound that my uncle has informed me is the metronome sound. I originally had no idea what that even was, but I have now figured out that the way to prevent this sound from being part of all voice recordings in the podcast is to hold down the "Apple" key and the "U" key to toggle whether or not the metronome is turned on BEFORE you begin recording. Once the recordings have been done with that sound turned on, however, there does not seem to be any way to get rid of it. And unfortunately, because of my limited access to the Mac computers, re-recording the entire podcast with the metronome turned off was not an option. So, my podcast has a little clicking sound as "background music", but for the future (and for any reader's information too) I have learned how to avoid this from happening again by making sure that the metronome is turned off before starting to record. The final challenge came when I exported my podcast to iTunes last night and discovered that it was twice as long as I thought it was. Since our assignment was to make a podcast that was 3-5 minutes long and my podcast was now 6 minutes, I decided to try to shorten it. In the process of doing this, I also figured out how to "delete and move" a section from the middle of the podcast so that I would not then have to drag each individual part to the left - and that discovery saved me a lot of valuable time.
I think I probably will create more podcasts in the future. They are certainly a great tool to be able to use in the classroom and since they include both pictures and sound recordings, they are a good way to reinforce concepts for both visual and auditory learners. I think it would also be fun for my students to make their own podcasts as well. When I was searching online to get ideas for my podcast, most of the podcasts that I found had been created by elementary school students - and some of them were really good too! For example, here are links to a podcast about butterfly life cycles made by 1st graders and to Radio WillowWeb, which contains over 30 podcasts created by 1st through 5th grade students at Willowdale Elementary School. As we have discussed in my technology class, elementary school students would be excited to be able to record their own work and then post it on the class web page or blog. This would also be a good opportunity for parents to see what their kids are doing in class. Having students create podcasts at the end of a unit would be a great way for the teacher to assess what they have learned about that topic. By the time they finished making their podcasts, the students would also have a good understanding of whatever subject their podcast is about.
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The good news is that I think you developed an understanding of the key concepts for building a podcast: gathering your source material (visuals, music, jingles and effects), writing your script, timing the production to display all of the elements at the right time, and finally producing the entire unit into a universal format like QuickTime or YouTube. I think you also see how the podcast fits into the classroom "arsenal".
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, you hit the learning curve of a new piece of software on a short deadline project, and that's something that happens often. Over time, you'll develop a deeper toolbox of things you know how to use, and/or skills that are transferable from tool to tool and the learning curve will be shorter.
Posting a blog like this with the things you learn (like the metronome!) for others to learn from as well as looking for the same kinds of lessons from others will help you with similar projects in the future. I'm glad you ultimately enjoyed the project and are looking forward to applying this technology in your own classroom.