KleinPod: Podcasting in Klein ISD

For whatever reason, my external hard drive does work on school computers. It works just fine on my laptop at home and my desktop at home. I’m still buying a new external hard drive, however. 320GB, baby! I figured that with all of the sound files I’ve been collection, I’ll need a bigger storage device eventually.

Today, my students used the LMS discussion board to listen to the musical selections that they chose last week. Each student found a copyright free song that they thought represented Vistas, and they uploaded it to the discussion board with their reasons for choosing it. They then had to listen to everyone else’s song and make a comment about each of them.

Thursday and Friday will be spent writing a script for their segment of the Getting to Know Vistas podcast. I plan on having them record on Monday and Tuesday. I still don’t know how I’ll set that up. I think that each group might need one full day working in the studio, so that means that I’ll have to come up with some kind of stations activitiy for next week.

1. Record the podcast and edit in the audio.
2. Fill out a Podcast Rubric for a peer’s podcast.
3. Blog about their experiences with podcasting so far.
4. ???
5. ???

I’ll figure something out. If you have any ideas, please post them! I am hoping that I can get the rest of my final exams figured out today, otherwise I’ll be doing a test review the traditional way. At least I have a back-up plan!

We are still working with PBWiki and the settings with Lightspeed. I will be a little frustrated if this site doesn’t go through – one of the main benefits I see in technology and this podcasting class is that we can connect with the community. The community doesn’t know much about us, and what they do know is often incorrect. Same thing with other educators in the district. I want the community to see how amazing the school is, and that we do learn, and that our students defy their expectations.

Ok, I admit it. I fully wanted to give the class a current event today and tell them to leave me alone so that I could get grading done. The end of the term is this week, and I have a huge back log of papers to grade. It was a bad day. My external hard drive died and with it died all of my material for my English IVA final review which I was going to podcast. I am still upset about it. I’m… devastated. It wasn’t just all of my podcasting material, but all of my school assignments as well. I adopted my personal hard drive for school use this year because there isn’t enough room on my school computer’s allocated space for all of my materials. At this point, it’s all gone. I’m desperate enough to pay someone to retrieve the information for me. Even if I do manage to save it, I’m not sure that I’ll get it back in enough time to record my review since the test is Friday.

For the test review, I have decided to keep the script format, but break it down into sections with commercials, just so I can give the kids a break. In the future, the kids will create their own commercials, but for now, I’m doing it. I had high hopes for this. I’ll update later when I know more.

The good news is that with or without a podcaster/podcatcher, my students are going to start working on the first *really real* podcast. It will be an informational series about our school. Each student has paired up with another student to work on a segment.

The segments are:
What is Vistas?
What kind of students go to Vistas?
What does a typical classroom at Vistas look like?
What does a typical day at Vistas look like?
My Vistas experiences – interview a graduate, a student, a parent, and someone who wants to come to Vistas.

They are so excited! And secretly, so am I!