Wow. Talk about a relevant topic. The technology teacher asked me about this the other day. He is confident that he and the students can produce the podcasts, he just doesn't know how he is going to make them available. After speaking with him about possible different he might save the podcast in, I think the best way for him to make them available to students and parents is through his school web account. We are going to set up a time for me to show him how to link them internally in his webpage. All teachers have a pretty good bit of space in their webfolders, so as long as he clears them out regularly, space shouldn't be a probelm
Another way that we have solved this problem is with the 4th and 5th grade. Each morning the student watch a podcast with the morning announcements. It is filmed the day before by students. Last year their tech lab parapro and I worked together countless hours to get a file properly saved so that we could upload it to our MediaCAST server(It's very particular. For some reason we have to upload the podcasts, which are Quicktime, under the Flash category or it won't work). Each morning the teachers login and play the announcements. This is the easiest way to show podcasts for several reasons, the main one being that it's internal and doesn't take up all our bandwidth then everyone in the school is showing the announcements. The downside of this is also that it's internal. That means parents, community members, etc cannot watch it from outside the network.
Uploading to the webserver or to the MediaCAST server are the two best options I have found. Please share if I am missing the obvious or easy choice!
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I like the idea that students and parents can view podcasts. This is beneficial on many different levels. By allowing students to produce the podcast, it gives them ownership. Students become empowered and feel that what they are learning is relevant in their lives. An added bonus to this is that their parents are provided a visible, tangible link into their child's school work. It seems to me this is a win/win situation.
ReplyDeleteThe idea of doing the news as a podcast is intriguing. As the media specialist at my school, I was asked to start doing the morning announcement news cast with students. I am currently videotaping (per my principal's request)the news and playing it at a certain time over the TV. The teachers have no control over when the news airs. My principal came to me today and stated that some of the students are still out in the hall during the announcements; therefore, missing them. If I were able to do the news by podcasting and then uploading it, the teachers would be able to show it in their classroom when it is convenient to them.
A couple of drawbacks to podcasting are:
sometimes teachers are so busy they simply forget to show the podcast and
do all students get to participate or is it a select few?
In regards to only being able to upload your news to the MediaCAST, could you not do a global webserver upload linking it to all your teacher's web accounts? (Of course, I do not know a lot about uploading to webservers or MediaCAST, so I could be way off base).
You mentioned the issue of sharing the podcasts. I have found that to be quite the conundrum also! I could post them on my blog, but then students that need them the most probably won't get them. I'm looking at podcasts to help bridge some gaps that students are having when they come from other schools. I also have a number of ESOL students that would benefit from this.
ReplyDeleteThe ideas for distribution so far are:
1. Blog-simple and easy, but like I said only accessible to those that have internet access.
2. Burn them to a cd-easy for me, and it would probably reach more students. That's a LOT of cds though!
3. Student brings jump drive, and I load it for them. They take it home and listen. This is the most cost efficient for me, but again that kids that need it most do not have jump drives.
Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
The school webpages for Henry County are great in that they allow teachers to have blogs and upload podcasts right onto their web pages. They are "School Wires" pages (not really sure if that means anything). That alleviates the problem of the internet. I could see Spring getting a lot of use out of her School Wires page! One of my teammates last year held book clubs in this manner. She would blog a question or thought and students responded in comments to her blog. Students were given time to access the page during our extended homeroom period --so internet wasn't an issue.
ReplyDeleteI never actually saw a page using the podcast capability, but the IT offered an afterschool class on creating and uploading them...so it is definately a possiblitiy.
I will be interested in seeing your future podcasts when your membership is approved.
How to best distribute the podcasts is an important issue to resolve, obviously. Video content from the mediacast file -- seems this should be a relatively easy process to convert that file to a web-friendly format; let me know if I can assist in researching this.
ReplyDeleteSchool Wires provides a suite of web-hosting services. I think I'm correct that Internet access would still be required for off-campus viewing (maybe I am not understanding your point, Anissa).