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.