ECOO 2008 Conference :: Forum

Hello, I am a teacher at A. Lorne Cassidy E.S. with the Ottawa Carleton District School Board. My colleague, Nathan Toft and I are looking forward to attending ECOO. Nathan and I are presenting a workshop on the Friday morning about podcasting with elementary students. We both teach grade 5/6 and this is our second year producing our class podcast called Portable Radio (portableradio.ca). We are really interested in learning about what other teachers are doing with technology in their classes. I am particularly interested learning about collaborations between classes around the world.

Hi Jane,

I'm interested in what motivated you to start the Podcast from your portable in the first place and how your parents are/or not involved in listening/participating.

Thanks 

Hi Quentin,

Good to hear from you. 

The honest answer to your question is just over a year ago I decided to install iTunes on my home computer to see what all the hype was about.  Not only could I now download songs legally, I was able to download podcasts dealing with a wide range of categories, some of which included K-12 education.

That summer Jane and I listened to a variety of classroom podcasts.  Most that were out there were "one-offs" but a few, like Radio WillowWeb

http://www.mpsomaha.org/willow/radio/listen.html

and Room 208 http://www.bobsprankle.com/blog/index.html

were producing shows on a regular basis.  So, in the beginning stages at least, those were our models.

As far as getting parents to listen, we send an email to the parents whenever a new episode is uploaded.  We are trying to get parents, friends and family to leave comments and participate more actively in the blog aspect of our podcast.  This has been the biggest hurdle as we're not entirely sure of all the parents really understand what this is all about.  As a matter of fact, tonight is our "Meet the Teacher" and we are using it as an opportunity to educate about podcast, blogs and all things Internet.

We hope to meet you at ECOO!