Using Podcasts in Your School

   I am very excited to write about the educational tool of Podcasts. Podcasts are an exciting tool to use in your instruction. Podcasts are simply a recorded broadcast that can be accessed by people to listen to at any time. There are lots of reasons to utilize podcasts in education. I have used podcasts during our "One School, One Book"Project. Each year our area participates in a program in which all the area districts are reading the same book each evening at home with their families. This is an effort you might want to look into to help promote family literacy through engaging activities. Each evening the different schools, read the same chapter at home. There is a comprehension question the next morning that is broadcast on the local radio station. Students  submit their answer to the question to possibly win a prize at their school. I was in charge of this program at our school and needed to come up with a way to help students engage and increase participation.
 
    One idea I came up with was to do a podcast and put it on the school website for parents, teachers and students to access. I asked teachers, principals and school administrators to each read a chapter. Each morning the students were so excited to guess who would be reading the next chapter. It was a great, FREE way to increase participation, really build excitement and A BUZZ about the project. In my class, there were students that did not have access to the Internet at home (we are a rural community.) So, I created a QR code for the podcasts. I am very lucky as all my of my students have their own i Pads to use to scan the code and listen in on the story during Morning Arrival. I felt it was a huge success and allowed accessibility to the story by all. Here is a link to the One School, One Book website: http://readtothem.org/our-programs/one-school-one-book/

Here are some additional ways I have used them in school:

•  Can be used to highlight student work or class projects
• Relate news or important events 
• Librarians can use them to tell stories or have a book chat   
• Grade levels can use them to help with teaching of a particular unit ~ Example: If you are teaching a unit on Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome, why not do a podcast where students' prepare a script with facts about each civilization; compare and contrast the two and then you can put in on the school website to be accessed and used as a FUN and catchy way to review for benchmarks or testing. Students working in such a fun  and innovative way really promotes higher level thinking and increases comprehension and understanding. 

   How can you use Podcasts in your school?