My Recipe for PODCASTING CON POLLO!

(I guess you could say I felt like this chicken...staring blankly at the computer wondering where to begin on my quest for learning about podcasts this week or perhaps this is what PODCASTING CON POLLO looks like!)



Podcasting con pollo is a delicious (wrong word...it's a new tool this week so let's try a different adjective)...I've been experimenting in the kitchen (at the computer) with this scrumptious (yes, that's better!) recipe for PODCASTING CON POLLO! If you're unfamiliar with the term "con pollo", it means "with chicken"; which is how I would describe my reluctance and fear to learn about podcasting this past week!


So here it is (my recipe for ) PODCASTING CON POLLO!



Ingredients needed:

• articles about Podcasting from which to learn



• supportive and knowledgeable colleague



• recording microphone headset (USB plug worked best)



• computer



• Audacity open-source program



• Lame MP3 encoder



• Divshare.com



• Personal and professional blogs
  

and finally..

• A willing participant (me!) to create their first podcast!

Step 1: Begin your reading of articles and books about podcasting before attempting one on your own. It's important to understand exactly what a podcast is before beginning the process of making this recipe.

In an article by Esther Kreider Eash entitled Podcasting 101 for K-12 Librarians, she defines it simply as "a digital audio file that's created, shared and heard". According to this same article, The New Oxford American Dictionary chose "podcast" as its 2005 Word of the Year. If this word has been so prevelant in society since 2005, it was definitely time for me to be "sinking my teeth" into this new technology and finding out how this could benefit me and my students.

Step 2: In order to prepare a proper "Podcast con Pollo" it is necessary to become familiar with podcasts that have already been created and used in an educational setting so you will know how your final product should turn out!

Will Richardson, Esther Kreider Eash and Wesley Freyer all recommended "Radio Willoweb" and Bob Sprankle's podcasts as excellent examples of podcasts in action! It was amazing to listen to students sharing their learning so globally, you just new they were having fun while they were creating, thinking and producing their work! I also wanted to figure out how to access the recommended podcasts by Joanne in her trailfire and discussion response but by using itunes as the source rather than just clicking the links. It was fairly easy for me to do this as both my husband and I each have our own ipod Nanos and access itunes frequently (but only for music....not anymore!) As pointed out so clearly in her article, Podcasting 101, is that podcasting provides a unique, affordable and diverse opportunity for professional development by listening to other educators share their knowledge and expertise through podcasts. The idea of being able to subscribe to a favorite podcast and be able to listen to it whenever and wherever you want is a huge bonus! I'm subscribing to Women of Web 2.0 and Bob Sprankle's Seedlings podcasts. I'm curious to see how faithful I am to taking the time to listen and learn using this method (I think I'll try Joanne's workout idea!)

Step 3: Now take the next ingredient in your recipe, a supportive and knowledgeable colleague, and beg her to spend some time with you as you learn this new and exciting tool!

A wonderful friend and "technogeek" as she likes to call herself, sat down with me and explained the process she has used with her students in the past when creating a podcast. It was a relief to be "preparing" my podcast (con pollo) with someone who knew their way around the kinks that can befall someone when tinkering with downloading software in a school division with so many blocks and "requests for service" when we want to add new software to our computers (even if they are free!).

Step 4: Take the last 6 ingredients in your recipe and mix them slowly and methodically together, being patient with the final ingredient to ensure it is well rehearsed and "ripe" before adding to the mixture.

Before I could begin recording, I needed an idea. I wanted something that I could share with my students as well so they could see what "learning" I am doing this year too! Since they visit our blog every week and we had just started it up. I thought it would be fun to create an "online tour" of our classroom blog. I'd read somewhere (so many articles I've been reading I sometimes forget where I find the information) that it was better not to read from a perfectly written script otherwise it sounds too rehearsed or monotone so I just wrote down some key points I wanted to make and "winged" the rest!

With my "sketched out" script, I downloaded Audacity as suggested by Will Richardson (and my colleague) and plugged in a headset (from the school's computer lab) into the USB outlet. I tested it out a few times to ensure it was working and began broadcasting my "tour". I must admit it was a bit weird talking to myself in an empty room but I was impressed with the final results. I would LOVE to have played with the Garageband features on our school's Macs to add the flair of a music introduction or background but due to time and my inexperience with podcasting (and using Macs), I decided to keep it simple and try that feature out the next time!

In order to "share" my podcast with you, I needed to select a site that could upload my recording and share it through my blog. Through word of mouth at our school, Divshare had come highly recommended for its ease of use and because the school division had not blocked it (yet!).

Before I could upload it, I had an extra step to take through an MP3 encoding site called lame. I'm not quite sure why this was required (this is the part of computers that baffles me!) but we needed to do this in order to make it an MP3 audiofile before Divshare would accept it. After that, using Divshare was so easy! Once it was uploaded to Divshare I simply copied the html code and pasted it into my blogger posting page under the html tab and VOILA!! My first podcast!

Step 5: With your Podcast Con Pollo finally prepared, it is important to use this recipe again and again with others (your students or colleagues) to perfect it, enhance it and reap the benefits of its unique "flavors"!

What surprised me the most about this Web 2.0 tool was all the ways it could be used in the classroom, not unlike photosharing and videosharing, except with the safety and security for parents that their child's identity would remain private but their voice and ideas could be heard!

In Podcasting 101 for K-12 Librarians, the uses of podcasts were endless. Here are just a few that I could see myself using some day:

- on a field trip using an MP3 player to document observations and notes

- conducting oral history interviews

-storytelling

-book reviews

-readers theater dramatizations

-readings or personal responses to novel studies or literature circles.

-on-demand tutorials

-sharing school news as a radio broadcast

-poetry readings

Another amazing site I found that shares an abundance of ideas for podcasting in the classroom and had links that would explain exactly how to integrate those ideas in a more step-by-step manner, it was called (ironically) Ideas for Podcasting in the Classroom.

What really drove home the benefits of podcasting for me, was a comment made by Eash that I hadn't even thought of but I deal with everyday in my classroom as I attempt to differentiate my instruction for the many needs and various types of learners. "The podcast is a viable alternative for delivering research content or lessons to students who need remedial or extended support. Auditory learners particularly benefit when podcasts are incorporated into the teaching model..."

Another terrific article I read that inspired me even more to be incorporating this tool into my teaching was written by Wesley Fryer entitled Classroom Audio Podcasting. Some of the benefits he highlighted were:

-"Podcasting is cheap!" With budget cuts and other areas of education needing funding, technology doesn't usually come cheap but podcasting only requires the use of a microphone and a computer.

-It invites an audience for the students from around the world as well as creating a "window into the classroom" for parents and community members to understand what is going on inside our classrooms.

-"It encourages students to communicate without all the bells and whistles that other types of multimedia modalities employ (eg. slide transitions, lighting, props, etc.)...helping students to focus more on the message's content and effective delivery."

- "Podcasts are interactive, creative and most of all FUN!"

To finish off my analogy of podcasting to a recipe (a different twist on this week's blog posting!), my suggested serving size and recommendation would be that Podcasting con pollo is for EVERYONE and that someday I hope to serve my Podcasting recipe con fiducia (with confidence)!