KleinPod: Podcasting in Klein ISD

I can’t believe I left this out! When we were getting for our Vistas recruitment Podcast, we invited Dr. Cain, the superintendent of the Klein, to come to give his impressions of Vistas and to explain how the school has helped out the district.

The two students interviewed him, and it went really well. D. did a GREAT job of talking to him and expanding questions when he needed to. Afterwards, Peggy Ekster came in to participate in a Q and A session with Dr. Cain. My students were AWESOME! They asked some great questions. I was so proud of them, and it was really nice to see Dr. Cain interact with the students. It just seemed like it was the bright point of his day.

They were so excited and invigorated by the whole experience that they want to interview Dr. Collins, a previous superintendent who is well known and loved in the district. I can hardly keep up with all of the projects they want to accomplish!

The second term (first semester!) has ended! This means tomorrow, we all get a new start. Plans for the podcasting class include creating TAKS review sessions for students at our school and at Krimmel Intermediate! Our Gramma Snob podcast last semester didn’t go over so well, mainly because we needed a visual aspect. Try explaining the differences between your and you’rewithout any visual elements. Yeah. like, I said, this year is a learning process. I had been planning on using the camcorder to help out with vodcasts, but I think that what I really need to do is use the Starboard Screen Capture software on the computers for now.

I am so angry with myself – I signed up for a MovieMaker class on Friday and totally forgot all about it on Saturday until I got the e-mail that I “failed” the course. I thought it was NEXT week. I really needed this for using the movies that we would make in class with Starboard and the Audacity files that we would record to explain the material. Grr. I guess I can try to figure it out myself – it seems pretty easy. I bet I could do it with our AL subscription.

One of my new students is ESL, so I’m *really* excited about having her in class. This could start to be that element that Aspiazu was hoping for – the ESL element. We can have bilingual podcasts now!

After struggling with absentee students, technology problems, holidays, and just plain apathy, I finally have a rough draft of the Vistas podcast. It was turned in a final podcast, but I managed to find a few things that we need to edit. First, we have to have some lead time before the first student starts to talk, we need to turn the volume down on the sound, and we have another interview that we can add to the testimonial part.

It was much, much shorter than I had anticipated (again, from lack of effort rather than lack of content), and so the students working on the podcast decided to condense it from a series to just one episode. Sigh.

I took three students who really had an interest in the class to work on it while the rest of the class worked on a script that I borrowed from the Apple conference so they could get practice working with the programs. They did most of the editing on it, and I have to say they did a pretty excellent job.

It was finished yesterday and I sent it over to the superintendent since we interviewed him for the project. I also stopped by Ann McMullan’s office who just happens to be the Executive Director of Educational Technology for the district. Even with the mistakes, she was impressed with what we did. We have finals next week, so I’m struggling with grades right now, but as soon as I get a chance, I’ll upload the file here.

I also need to get with the program and create a final exam podcast. This time, I’ll break them down into episodes. Wish me luck!