Podcasts

I think that there are many possibilities for podcasts in my classroom. There are already activities for which we have students write out scripts. For example, we have students dramatize a whole novel or short story in a few minutes. Then, students generally act these out. The benefits of podcasting are that students can be more intentional in their scripting. They can correct mistakes through editing and actually work through a writing/production process as they complete a final product. Having the final product be a podcast (to be added to the class blog) will push students to create quality in a way that the classroom dramatization does not. Also, writing scripts and producing them as podcasts will make grading easier. I find it very difficult to grade classroom dramatizations, especially if I want the focus to be on the script quality. The fact that students can add music and sounds to their podcasts is also exciting.

I envision students creating podcasts as they extend their thinking beyond a piece of text. Podcasts can capture conversations between characters that we don't actually see in the novel. They can also capture monologues from individual characters. I would really like to incorporate podcasting into my lit. circles wiki that I plan to create for my American literature classes. I have several ideas for what the podcasts might be, but I am not sure at this point what I will require students to do.