I was reading Tim Wilson's blog looking for information about purchasing equipment when I came across a couple postings I will republish - one a list of ways podcasts can be used in the classroom and the other an interesting way of encouraging administrators to drink the podcast Kool-Aid.
The post I was looking for is below:
The Podcave (an update)
December 24th, 2005 | by Tim Wilson |
I posted a while ago about my new podcasting microphone, but I thought I’d post an updated photo of the podcave. If you click through to the photo on Flickr you’ll be able to see some additional information about the equipment. The new gear includes a Heil PL-2 boom, Electro-Voice RE20, and Model 309 shockmount.
Tricking administrators into using technology
May 5th, 2007 | by Tim Wilson |
I’m a pretty sneaky guy, and I believe in the power of leaders leading with technology. So when our Director of H.R. asked me if I had any ideas about how we could streamline the process of recording applicant interviews, I thought it was a great opportunity to get the rest of the administrators podcasting.
So we bought a bunch of 30GB iPods with Griffin iTalk microphones for the principals and district administrators. We use a very structured interview process which ensures that the administrators can trust one another’s evaluations. That means that one elementary principal can interview a candidate and put that person’s interview recording into a pool that all the other elementary schools can draw from. The whole process goes like this:
- Record (it’s a one-click operation with the iTalk)
- Connect the iPod to the computer and transfer the WAV file
- Compress the interview to MP3 format
- Upload the file to a special area of one of our servers
- Subscribe to a podcast feed that delivers all of the interviews for a given licensure area
No more sending cassette tapes around the district. Everything is password protected to ensure that only authorized people can upload or subscribe to interview podcast feeds.
I told my colleagues that I was treating this like a gateway drug to get them hooked on podcasting and digital media in general. How cool would it be for principals to be the ones on the frontier leading the charge for innovative uses of technology in the classroom? With a totally new web site going live in the fall (more on that later), I’ve challenged each of them to blog and podcast regularly next year. And wouldn’t you know that the iPod and iTalk mic each of them has makes a perfect little podcast recording platform. Sneaky aren’t I?
iPod ideas
July 6th, 2006 | by Tim Wilson |
I gave a half-day workshop this morning on iPods, iTunes, and podcasting. We generated a pretty good list of ideas for uses of this technology in classrooms and schools:
- Collect field notes during a science field trip
- Living museum, researching characters
- “Radio shows”
- Creating audio guides for local museums
- Teacher powerpoints
- Early language learners, (rhyming, etc.)
- Staff development
- Screencasts
- Language learners recording assessments
- Discovery Education videos
- Science reports
- Art projects
- Digital portfolios
- Weekly classroom news
- Serial storytelling
- Reflective journals
- Summaries of school events
- Broadcast school sporting events
- Roving reporters
- Capturing oral histories (family history)
- Podcast vocab words and spelling lists
- Flashcard practice with iFlash
- Musical compositions
- Soundseeing tours
A lot of these ideas could be applied in different subject areas around the school.
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