This week you will finish writing your scripts which should include 10 questions and answers, an introduction, and a closing for your interview. Many of you are close to being finished.You should do a “dry run” of your interview and time it.If your questions and answers are shorter than 1 minute long; you will need to “beef up” your answers.You may want to check out some of the resources on my blog to help you find more information for your answers.After you have finished your scripts and are satisfied with the length and information provided, please print our 2 copies-one for you and one for your partner.I will have highlighters available and I would suggest you highlight your “lines.”You will then need to find a space with your partner to rehearse your interview for your podcast. Remember-you don’t want it so sound like you are reading from a piece of paper when you are doing your recordings.
During class 2, you will have the chance to make a “practice” recording using Audacity or Adobe Soundbooth and then mess around with editing.You will view the following tutorials in Atomic Learning to help you with this exploration.
What does BYOD stand for? By the end of class this week, my 7th graders will know. Students will check out a couple of articles and blog posts to get a sense of both sides of the argument. There are definitely pros and cons. BYOD Worst Idea of the 21st Century and The Open Classroom: Bring Your Own Device will be used as resources. I am anxious to hear how my students stand on this topic. We have just revamped our current policy regarding student use of personally owed devices in school specifically e-readers. I hope our students will take advantage. CNN shares a video in their on line article, "School gives kids cell phones as a teaching tool." It is a very interesting video. I have to wonder what would happen if our students were allowed to use cell phones as tools in the classroom.
**Please excuse the length of this post, but it is designed to give instructions to my students on a day I am absent.**
I am sorry I am not here today, but I know you will do a great job for Mrs. Delaney!
Today we are going to be looking at a different type of media called “podcasting.” We will start out by watching a great introduction and explanation, “Podcasting in Plain English.” Mrs. Delaney will play this for you.
Now that you have seen this video, I am sure you have a better understanding of what a podcast is and maybe even some ideas of how useful they can be.
There are many sites which will be great resources for you as we work on our own podcasts. I would like you to be able to find them quickly, so you will need to bookmark them in your diigo accounts. (Your log in information should be on your school sites tables-ask a neighbor for help with this if you are stuck!) If you don’t have a diigo account yet or cannot log in to yours, just quietly take a look at a couple of the sites below while your classmates are bookmarking them. For those of you, who have successfully logged in to your diigo accounts, please be sure to give these 4 sites a tag of “podcast” so you will be able to find them quickly!
Okay, so now you have some resources. Let’s take a look at some podcasts. A great place to find podcasts is a place you are all very familiar with, the iTunes store. I bet you’ve never noticed the “podcast” tab at the top of the website. We are going to take a look at it today. On your desktops you have an “audio/video” folder. If you open it up, there is an iTunes shortcut inside. Please use this to take you to the iTunes store. If for some reason it isn’t working, simply use your Google search engine and get yourself there!
Just as with iTunes music, videos, apps, and tv shows, there are some podcasts which aren’t appropriate for school or for students your age. The ones marked “explicit” are off limits!! Please remember the AUP you signed in the beginning of the year and make good choices as you check out some of these podcasts. A safe place to search would be the “Discovery Network." So please search Discovery Network in the "Search Store" tab in the top right corner. Once you have hit enter, you will need to look on the left side of the page under, "Filter By Media Types", and select Podcasts. The last step is to select Discovery Networks under "Publishers" on the left. You will be checking out some of the podcasts from this section. Please do not view the Military Channel. Remember, podcasts aren’t single recordings, but a series of episodes, much like a tv show. Use your search in iTunes to get you to this menu if you can’t find it anywhere else on the site. Ask for help if you need it. You will be given about 5 minutes to watch all or part of a podcast.
Once you have finished with this part of the class, you can log off the computer. You will now be given an iPod. Please be careful with these, and once again, your AUP applies to these devices!!! It would make sense to find the downloaded podcasts under podcast on your devices, but for some reason you will need to look in videos instead. You will find 4 podcasts (2 CNNStudent News, 1 Dirty Jobs, and 1 Discovery Space). Please take a few minutes to watch and experience at least one of these on the iPod.
Once you have returned your iPod, you will work together as a class to complete a Venn diagram comparing and contrasting your experiences with these podcasts on the computer and the iPod. I know this was a quick introduction, but we will be following up with this topic for the next couple of weeks. You and a partner will be creating an audio podcast to put on your blogs!!
This has been an incredible week! My students are up and blogging!! It has been very exciting to watch them get their posts uploaded. So many students added "Cluster Maps" to their blogs and have discovered they have visitors from different parts of the country. I cannot wait to see the second blog posts my students create for themselves. I have read posts from other teachers who have shared their experiences about their students' blogging, but it is very different when you experience it for yourself. I know it won't be the "thing" for all of my students, but I do feel as though blogging will be a very positive experience for most of them. The next aspect will be comments. I hope my students will receive positive and encouraging comments on their blogs. Donald Latumahina posted about this very thing in his blog, "Life Optimizer." How to Handle Negative Feedback in 6 Simple Steps gives some insight in regard to the topic of negative feedback. I would recommend taking a look as he has some great advice. Hopefully none of my students will have to deal with negative feedback right off the bat, but if they do I feel this post will help them. Creating a second post will be exciting. Cool Cat Teacher Blog posted, "Ten Habits of Bloggers That Win!" There are some great tips on this post. Check it out!!
I have to admit I was feeling a bit overwhelmed at the thought of proofreading all of the "About Me's" my students had created for their blogs. What started off as a chore quickly turned in to a task of sheer pleasure. First of all, I was very impressed with the way many of my students presented themselves. I learned so much about many of them, and what I learned I am not sure I would have discovered any other way. I discovered one of my students loves music from the 1940's and another enjoys Gospel music. It reminded me of the old adage, "not to judge a book by its cover." In terms of negatives, there is really only one observation I would like to share. My students don't recognize when they need to use a capital "I"!!! If I had a dollar for each time one of my students didn't capitalize the letter "i", I would have been able to go on an amazing vacation traveling around the world first class, and dining at the finest restaurants. I am sure they will work on this in their next posts. So thank you my students, for sharing a part of yourselves with me and the rest of the world!!
