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Intervention Podcasting

Intervention Podcasting

Janice Kelly
Somers Elementary, Mogadore Local Schools

Annette Kratcoski
Research Center for Educational Technology

The Project

According to Flanagan and Calendra, podcasting is “an automated technology that allows learners to subscribe and listen to digitally recorded audio shows” (Flanagan & Calandra, 2005). Changing technologies have now made it possible to view and listen to video clips in much the same way in the form of “podcasts”. The term podcasting is currently being used by most people to refer to vodcasts as well as to the early audio casts. The use of podcasting continues to grow in our society and many educators are beginning to explore its use as a tool for teaching and learning.

What began as a teacher mentor project transformed into a student mentor project. Our Science Committee members had long discussed the topic of science intervention for those students who struggled to grasp new concepts or for those who missed lessons due to absenteeism. Rather than have teachers go back and re-teach a lesson, I suggested that teachers could have the option of allowing students to view a video of the lessons on the network server. The teachers on the committee were not ready to commit to the use of technology for intervention, resorting rather to worksheets or packets of worksheets as a means of intervention. I continually struggled with the idea of worksheets as it meant more work for students who struggled to understand.

Thanks to a grant from RCET (Research Center for Educational Technology) through the Jennings Foundation and one teacher who was interested in an alternative intervention, my suggestions for technology use came to fruition. We purchased four Digital Blue© video cameras and two video iPods in order to capture science lessons taught in the classroom. Productions video-taped and edited in the classroom could be uploaded to the iPods, making them portable learning tools. It took a demonstration of the equipment and showing the ease of use of the equipment to convince the other science teachers that technology could be an effective intervention. They were not quite ready to implement the technology in the classroom but were ready for me and my students to provide the video necessary to compliment their classroom instruction.

Time is critical in the classroom. Finding time to teach everything that needs to be taught is difficult, and an even more difficult task is finding time to help teachers incorporate a new technology into their teaching repertoire. I resorted to using the students in my fifth-grade classroom to mentor the teachers. Actually, the students were the ones who wanted to teach the lessons and produce the video, thus reinforcing the concepts as they prepared lessons and developed their scripts. They began to take requests from the other science teachers for lessons they needed to compliment their work in the classroom. This process served as a review of science concepts taught in other grades which was beneficial as we prepared for the Ohio Science Achievement Test. The test requires students to recall information learned in grades three, four and five. I did not have to invest a great deal of time re-teaching or reviewing content material the students had previously been taught.

Using PVC pipes, students constructed a video broadcasting booth. White shower curtains were hung along the pipes in order to create a neutral backdrop for the videos. The students prepared their scripts and carefully video-taped their lessons. While the quality of their work was somewhat elementary, it was their work and they took great pride in presenting their productions to their peers and the teachers who requested the video. They had great ownership in the productions and motivation was very high.

Students were instrumental in the process of uploading their videos to the iPods. Many of the students were familiar with the process of downloading and uploading audio and video files to MP3 players and iPods. They were more than enthusiastic to teach their teacher about the procedure. We had some issues to deal with, beginning with administrative barriers that made it difficult for us to have the appropriate software available to convert our MP3 files to MP4 files. Using my personal laptop, we were able to make the conversions necessary to view the videos on our iPods. The students would then take the finished products on the iPods to the requesting teachers and they would use the video as needed. The students helped guide them through the process of finding and viewing the videos. Due to administrative concerns over issues of privacy and the Internet, the casts were not accessible online but instead shared internally at our school.

We had a student in our room who had been hospitalized approximately forty percent of the school year. We would send the iPod to the hospital with his tutor and he could view our science lessons and catch up on what was missed during his hospitalization. We would also include message videos to let him know what was going on in other aspects of our classroom and let him know how much we missed him. This single act kept him connected to his classmates and helped bridge the gap in missed lessons.

Results

Student involvement in the project impacted learning in many ways. Most interesting to note was that the students needed to create a storyboard for the productions and other teachers commented it was evident that this single task helped the students become more organized and focused in their work.

During the editing and transfer process, students gained great insight into how movies are made and how special effects can impact the quality of the video. They began to recognize their own mannerisms and how they presented themselves to others, being careful to make sure their grammar was correct and the facts they presented were accurate. They wanted to make sure their videos were not boring and began to incorporate “snippets” of sound and visual effects for the viewers. The Digital Blue© editing software allows users to insert many different special effects. Students also had the ability to make the transitions of their video clips more appealing to their viewers.

Conclusions

While the project was not quite what I had expected it to be, it was a valuable experience in many aspects. Had I had more control of the project the students may not have been as involved in the productions nor would they have gained the experience in video production that was gained through the process. From a concept viewpoint, the students gained in their knowledge of the content they presented. It is said that if you can teach it, you know it. These students certainly demonstrated their level of understanding of concepts in the videos they produced. During classroom discussions, they would recall the concepts and activities they produced in their science videos to connect new learning to previous learning.

For the upcoming school year I will continue to use the students as mentors to the teachers. This is a creative way to deal with the issue of time. Students can mentor as they learn the concepts and interact with teachers and students in all grade levels.

References

Flanagan, B. & Calendra, B. (2005). Podcasting in the classroom: Involving students in creating podcasting lessons. Learning and Teaching with Technology. 33(3), 20-23.


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