As an educator always looking for new and innovative ways to engage my learners with a quality education, using podcasts in the classroom poses as my newest discovery. Until recent, I have never thought to search for student geared podcasts. Honestly, it just has never crossed my mind. To my surprise, there are actually some really well constructed podcasts that are created for the sole purpose of engaging kids in all sorts of educational means. One podcast in particular that has proven to provide such quality content is Wow In The World from National Public Radio (NPR). The podcast is “for curious kids and their grown-ups,” as stated on the Wow In The World website. The podcast provides its user with not only audio episodes, but supplemental material for each episode as well. This extra material consists of a summary of each episode, and additional questions that allows listeners to extend their understanding on the content covered in the episode. If you are an educator, I’m sure the gears are turning on how you could implement such technologies in your classroom. Let me help.
Where Did We Come From is the title of a specific episode created on August 31, 2017 by Wow In The World. The episode covered content surrounding the history of Homo Sapiens (origins, migrations…etc.) and explanations of hurricanes. The episode is one of the longer episodes at 30 minutes and 15 seconds, whereas the average length per episode is around 15 to 20 minutes. Not only are my students provided with a very engaging and well constructed audio recording, but the supplemental material allows students to gain a deeper understanding through their creation of their own ancestor migration map. Whereas the NPR created podcast only provides its users with a summary in the supplemental materials, some podcasts such as ThisAmericanLife provide its users with a full transcript of each episode. However, if you embed episodes off of the NPR created podcast and paste the URL into an address bar you are able to access the transcript for each episode. Thus, students can follow along while listening.
When considering implementing podcasts into your curriculum, it is important to focus on the length of such episodes you are providing your students. No matter how engaging an episode is and depending on the grade level, from my experiences, students will most likely lose focus after a given amount of time. I feel that Wow In The World’s episodes are a good length, as the average length per episode fits perfectly into a 40 minute academic period. I plan to provide my students with a time slot at about 10 minutes into the episode, Where Did We Come From, where they will start, thus providing them with roughly a 20 minute episode. From there, I plan to have students partake in a discussion thread surrounding the topics covered in the episode. As a synthesizing task, students will use the supplemental resources available to create an ancestor migration map. The wonderful aspect about using podcasts in your classroom is the diversity of content available. Educators must put in the leg work of choosing episodes for specific content areas, depending on what content educators are looking to support. Learners are able to meet the appropriate and obvious social studies and science (hurricanes) content standards, aspects of English Language Arts (ELA) Standards, and aspects from the standards associated with the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). Although, the benefits students can gain from simply listening to podcasts and discussing their finding, even if it doesn’t necessarily align in a multidisciplinary approach, will still provide students with, at a minimum, ELA support. As Mammina (2017) states, “In light of the Common Core State Standards’ shift toward the use of nonfiction, podcasts provide a unique way to build critical thinking skills while adhering to state standards.” With older grades, students can produce podcasts themselves with the intent to share their creations with younger grades. By creating podcasts students can start the shift of being content creators rather than simply being content consumers.
Happy teaching!
Reference
Mammina, A. 2017. Teaching the art of listening: how to use podcasts in the classroom. Education Week Teacher. Retrieved from http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/teaching_now/2017/09/teaching_the_art_of_listening_how_to_use_podcasts_in_the_classroom.html.
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