Podcasts, Video and Screencasting With My Students

     Last year I ventured into screen casting with my 7th & 8th grade students in my Mouse Squad.org group to fun success.  There were a few teachers in our building who wanted to know how to learn more about what Google Docs/Drive could do for them as teachers so I decided to make a few screencasts. When I mentioned this to my 8th graders, they were excited to try to make screencasts of their own.  So I suggested that they start with something simple like explaining how to make a power point in Microsoft and then move onto other types of web tools like Fotobabble.   The students had moderate success using Screenr since our school intranet had issues allowing the students to have accounts but had much better success using Screencast-O-Matic even though the students thought that Screenr was easier for them to learn to use. 
   This year my goal was to venture into podcast and video but I really haven't felt completely comfortable taking the next steps.  The class has just finished creating some great screencasts for other students and teachers to view on using Edmodo, Google Slides and Google Sheets and I really wanted to take the students to the next level.   After reading chapter 8 in the class textbook, gleaning some good ideas and working on my own podcast, I feel lot more comfortable taking my class to the next level of web tools to learn.  
   Here are some of the tips and techniques from the text that I will definitely use: 

• Listen to (and your students should too) some podcasts from other students.  The textbook recommends: Radio Willow Web and Coleycasts .   
• Get other teachers involved in the creation of podcasts, especially teachers already have an interest in trying new web tools.  
• Whatever ideas you have, "put them into practice simply by recording digital audio, but the key is to turning the recordings into podcasts is to publish them" (Richardson, p. 117, 2010)  so that you share them with others. 
• Before you have your students podcasting, make sure you try it out first several times, so you experience it and know what it expect...
• Use your blog software to get your mp3 file published on the internet. If you are using Blogger, watch a YouTube video for help since it is a bit more complicated.  

    So with a few more practices of my own, I should be ready to teach my students the art of podcasting!   

Richardson, Will. Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin, 2006. Print.