Podcasting 101: Before you start
Posted on | February 10, 2013 | 6 Comments
From my "Podcasting 101" talk at the IH Barcelona ELT Conference last weekend…
Image from my presentation: The 3 Ps…
Although the equipment is important, before you start podcasting with a class, you want what I call the three Ps not just of podcasting but of using any classroom technology:
- Permission
- Privacy
- Practice
Permission
If you're teaching young learners, obtaining written permission from parents is vital before you start posting things online. You've much more likely to obtain it if you provide information on what you're going to be doing, where, and explain that what will be posted online will be posted privately.
Privacy
It would be nice to podcast to the entire world, but both parents and adult learners themselves will probably be more comfortable knowing that access to what they are posting is restricted.
For full privacy, Edmodo (a sort of "private Facebook") is wonderful and it's also possible to configure a private blog only your learners can access.
If you want an "audience" for your podcasts, what works great is to have two groups sharing the same Edmodo group or blog, which could include two groups in the same school or be two groups in different countries learning each others' language. I have a friend and colleague (Hi, Kate!) doing wonderful things on Edmodo in that fashion, one week in Spanish, one in English.
Practice
Even though eventually you want your learners to do the podcasting, you want some practice before you take it into the classroom. As I suggested in my Conference talk, if you have children of your own, or family living in other countries, then you've got people to record and people to record for. If not, try the tools out for yourself and — if you wish — keep all your recordings private. An audio journal makes a great little project, even if it remains entirely private and not even you ever go back to listen to it!
It's not knowledge that you seek (it's not necessary to know everything there is to know about all the tools in order to podcast!), it's the confidence that practice will give you that will get you and your learners started. That's what matters!
Coming next: What is podcasting?
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6 Responses to “Podcasting 101: Before you start”
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All posts by Tom Walton, teacher trainer at IH Barcelona
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February 10th, 2013 @ 23:27
Someone at the talk mentioned podcasts on OneStopEnglish. I've looked and can't find them and suspect that they require subscription. Can anyone confirm that?
What you do have there is quite a good introduction to podcasting by Nik Peachey.
February 11th, 2013 @ 08:56
And "Hi" Tom
! What you can do at OSE this month is win a voice recorder. Un beso, K.
February 11th, 2013 @ 09:27
Thanks for pointing that out, Kate: I SO want another one
!
Seriously, a single recorder is OK in class, two would be better, and — as I suggested in the talk — if your learners have smart phones, both SoundCloud and Audioboo are great apps and the digital voice recorder is no longer necessary.
More on both of those later this week.
February 11th, 2013 @ 10:50
For anyone teaching Business English, the Top Trumps cards on OneStopEnglish look great!
February 11th, 2013 @ 15:28
Great session Tom – would love to try podcasting (if/when I ever get back into a classroom!)
How precise are those voice recorders? Can you rewind just a fraction to re-record for example the last sentence? I was wondering if it would be a suitable tool for doing Community Language Learning, where you build up conversations or narratives in small chunks.
Cheers,
P.
February 11th, 2013 @ 16:06
Thanks, glad you liked it, Piet.
On the different models I've used (I'll supply details later in the week), what you suggest would be hard (though it would be great to be able to do it). You can replay the track no problem, but on the one we used in the session that has to be the whole track. Note also that the sound volume is limited unless you connect it to speakers.
CLL isn't obviously podcasting and perhaps requires a different tool: I know we still have hand-sized cassette recorders in IH which are great for what you say. Literally rewind and stop immediately will generally give you just the last thing said, probably more easily than a fancy digital recorder.
I did have a student say "What's THAT??!!" the last time I took one into class
!