Week 6 - Podcasts

I created my podcast to help my Pre-AP Pre-Cal students.  During this time of year, I have many students who will be missing several periods in a row due to extra-curricular activities (Robotics, softball, soccer, DI, etc.).  This year my students have shared with me that it is hard to learn new material simply by reading the filled-in notes that I give them.  For example, one of my Pre-Cal students was absent the day we discussed the 8 Basic Trig Identities.  When she returned to class, she was completely lost, and we were moving on to some Basic Trig Proofs.  This student had a copy of the notes all worked out, complete with little side notes and helpful hints.  Regardless of how detailed the notes were, this student was still struggling to grasp the main concept of the lesson.  However, all it took for this student to understand the new material was a few minutes one-on-one with me walking her through the notes.  I began to wonder if that would help more of my students than just her.  I asked a few students randomly about their thoughts on me creating a podcast of the notes for each lesson.  The general consensus was that it would be much used and appreciated.  Therefore, when we were tasked to create a podcast, I decided to hit two birds with one stone so to speak. 

As a visual learner, I think that podcasting can help enhance learning for students who were absent or simply need a refresher.  It would certainly be beneficial to me if I were able to both see what the teacher was writing, as well as hear what he/she was saying.  I will have my students visit my podcast to determine how helpful it is.  I will update my blog once I have received feedback from my students.  If all goes well, I will be creating podcasts for all of my class notes in the future.

I created my podcast using Jing – to capture the image on the screen and my sound – and the recording option on my Active Inspire program for my Promethean Board.  This recording application in Active Inspire can simply take a screen shot or record the mouse’s movements until you turn the recording off.  Once recorded, the playback is saved as a Windows Media Video Clip.  After I had written out the notes, which ended up being the longest part of this process, I used Jing to capture the image on my computer – the video playing – while I walked my students through the notes verbally.  I will probably need to create two Jing videos for longer notes since the time limit is 5 minutes, but if it helps my students, then I will readily take these extra steps.  As long as I record myself writing out the notes during one of my classes, then these podcasts will be fairly easy to create.  To that end, I do plan on continuing to use podcasts in the foreseeable future as a tool to enhance my students’ learning.