Podcasts killed the radio star!

Hello!

     Are you already playing in your head the song!? hahahahahaha I cannot stop it!

     Anyway... today I have come with another tool that I have discovered! To be honest, I have heard about it before but not in an educational context, specially with younger learners. I am talking about PODCASTS!!!!!

     But... what is a podcast!? In case you were wondering, here is the answer:

     A podcast is a lot like a radio show. It can have episodes, and it’s usually in audio-only format, although video podcasts do exist. The length of a podcast episode can vary from two minutes to two hours. Listeners will typically subscribe to favorite podcasts so that new episodes are delivered to them through whatever app they use.

     Additionally, podcasts can be used in flipped classrooms in the same way you might use videos: to deliver content or explain topics in a different way for students.

     There are many tools that can be used to create podcasts. Here are some of the most popular ones for you to take a look at if you want:

• Spreaker

• Ivoox

• Podomatic

• SounCloud 

      To try this, me and some colleagues have created a weather project for students from Sixth Grade. To develop it, we finally have chosen SoundCloud because it allowed us to upload audios, promote them and share them. The audio tracks that we record or upload can be tagged, categorised, shared on social networks and organised into playlists. In addition, it has the added value of creating groups, so that in our classrooms we can make work teams with our students so that they can broadcast their own radio programs in the cloud, with frequent episodes. 

     I must say that I have found this activity quite challenging. The fact of making the final outcome of a project an audio was a little scary for me. But after overcoming my fears, I have found it very rewarding and attractive for the students and myself included! As far as the tool we have chosen to use, I must say that it is very intuitive for beginners and I didn´t have to "fight" with it too much!

     Now let´s dig into the project. For this project, we have created a Google Doc with all the details and instructions needed to know to do this project:

Furthermore, each one of us has created a SoundCloud account. My account is the following:



In there, I have created a specific playlist with some audio examples of weather podcasts:




Additionally, in that playlist I  have included the Welcoming Audio that we have created for our students:




Regarding my podcast, I have added to it a Creative Commons License: