I love Audicity

Last week I decided to assing my students a project that required them to create their very own podcast. Now this was not just one of those lessons that I spent weeks designing. I woke up the Friday after I learned to use it in my class and designed a lesson.

Although I know that most teachers are not given the technology that the students at my school are privlidged to have and I can not just make up a lesson that incorporates the use of multiple pieces of equipment such as computers, microphones, and the internet I am blessed to be able to do this so I caution DO NOT TRY THIS UNLESS YOU HAVE AT LEAST 3 class periods to give up.

Now as I sketched out how I wanted the class to be structured and what not only the curriculum goals, and the learning objects, I had to keep in mind that there were 21st Century skills that my students had to have. The included:

• The ablility to know what their community will need in the future and be able to know how to fulfil that need. i.e computer program skills.
• Communication skills
• The ability to situate cognition
• The ability to use mutliple forms of media to gather ideas and share material.

This is why I designed the podcast lesson. Although I did have to scaffold knowldege by having them listen to an example of a podcast and show them what the audacity file looked like, as well as give them time to "play" (Vygotsky) with the program and learn the basics in order to make a podcast, it was one of the better lessons that I designed. My students really learned the meaning of time, patience, research, and the need for a great script. They also created a memory that they will have forever.

Here is an example of how creative your students can get.

Using multimedia editting

When incorporating any multimedia into your classroom you have to first think about its affordances. What is an affordance? Well it is the reason why we choose to use one medium over another. Over the years thru this new 21st century Renaissance there have been a huge wave of devises that can be incorporated into the classroom in order to enhace our students learning exprience. The use of multimedia gives a rich learning experience and challenges our students to think outside of the A, B, or C option.

When using mutimedia especially tv, video we have to ask ourselves... What is our student outcome. We are putting content in a context; but what else. Are we teaching them how to work in groups? How to use a new tool? How to think on their feet? What about public speaking skills do we want them to learn that as well? This is the delema that I have faced as I design rich learning expreiences for my students.

When creating a lesson around digital video editting I have to think why is it that they need it; I mean all they really have to do when using a digital camera is delete the last take and do it again. But there is a use for it. Those cool movie enhancements such as background music, incorporating powerpoints, and having transitions between scenes is priceless to intergrate into a multimedia lesson.

When using digital movie editting i my class I found that it requires a lot of time and energy and is best left to an end of the year project after standardized tests.