Over the years, there has been significant effort on the part of students and teachers throughout School District 21 to create authentic instructional opportunities for students, and in many cases recently, these have come in the form of student podcasts. Previous posts on The Modern Pen have commented on podcasting or provided information for podcasting workshops. These posts include:

- Tools for 21st Century Learning-February 2009
- Podcasting Workshop-August 2007
- What’s a Podcast?-August 2007

As we continue to evolve in our use of podcasting, we have more tools available to teachers and students than ever before with which they can produce such podcasts. These include staff laptops and both the iMac and Mac Mini computer labs as well as directly on to devices such as iPods and iPod Touches.

The following article from the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) makes connections between the National Educational Technology Standards and podcasting in the classroom.



Links to actual podcasts recorded in District 21 include:
* Teacher Reflections on Podcasting (Staff)
- Administrators’ Ideas about Relevant Schools (Staff)
- New Staff Members Commit to Relevance (Staff)
- Cooper MS 8th Grade Alcohol Podcasts (Students)
- London MS 7th Grade Immigration Podcasts (Students)
- An Understanding of Marketing (Students) (Names are pseudonyms.)
- Binge Drinking and the Brain (Students)

For teachers wanting to learn more about podcasting, here is another useful podcast to listen to as a resource for learning more about what can be done during a podcast--including the use of sound effects!
- Chicago Public Radio/NPR Re-Sound

Directions for Podcasting with GarageBand

AtomicLearning.com GarageBand Tutorials

Tags: Podcast, Classroom Instruction, Students