This week, my students and I started podcasting from our music classroom. There are numerous benefits for podcasting.
Benefits:
- It gives students ownership for sharing what they have learned.
- You can share it much easier because you are not using students’ faces. Therefore, you can share it with a larger audience.
- It requires little tech equipment and you do not need to be a techie to accomplish it.
- Your older elementary students can do this with the device they have access to in school.
- Or you can do this with one device in a classroom.
How to Podcast:
- Choose the material. In this podcast, I wanted to showcase the 2nd graders ability to accompanying using a whole note rhythm.
- Make it cross-curricular. Though I am narrating this podcast, as we grow as musicians throughout the school year, the students will write out what to say in their podcast.
- Choose your equipment.
- To initially create a podcast, you need a device that you can record audio. This can be a laptop, a Chromebook, a mobile device, a tablet, etc.
- The microphone in the device works well or you can add a mic. An example is a USB mic like Blue’s line of USB mics.
- A program to record. I use Soundtrap or GarageBand. You can also use programs like Anchor.
- Royalty-free music to add to the beginning and the end of the podcast.
- Share the podcast. When finished, share the podcast. This gives the students more sense of ownership and pride. In addition, it helps take your music classroom from your school to the parents’ mobile devices. You can publish the podcast simply by sharing the link in an email, or creating a site with Google sites, or in a digital portfolio like Seesaw. Or, you can publish them professionally using services such as iTunes, Google Play, Soundcloud, etc.
Once you begin doing this, the students will take more control over it and want to continue to podcast more. I have seen great examples of student podcasts from reflecting on the process of composition to creating a podcast where the students talk about certain musical pieces while the pieces are played throughout the school hallways.
Listen to the 2nd grade podcast episode 1 below:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ZM1kF5ysdDUEBBNqIAc1Zv1i1p6ktwPY
