Student Reflections on their First Individual Podcast

My students have completed their first individual podcasts and will be handing them in over the next couple of days. I had a chance to ask them how it went during todays class. What follows is an overview of what they shared.

• - when asked how long it took them, most of them said about 2-4 hours. One gr. 6 boy said 20 minutes...I'm thinking that it'll show.


• - when asked what took the longest, they said that practising what to say and recording quality speaking/reading took the most time. Ka-CHING. That's exactly what I hoped the answer would be. From what I've been reading, fluency improves through practice reading aloud, and through performance reading. So that's encouraging.


• tech related problems seem to be minimal, and kids are game to solve the problems they are running into. I'm so encouraged by their willingness to do this at home. All I basically had to do was train them during one week of class time, then give them the due date for their first individual project , and Voila! great kids. just great.


• So funny listening to kids share how they holed up in their rooms and kicked their parents out of the house so that they could record in peace. They're soooo shy! I have to laugh. I asked them if they shared their projects with their parents. NOOO WWayyyy! I found that funny. I mean, I'd be so interested in what my kid was doing for school projects, especially if it was a little unique.
  

That basically sums up what they shared today in class. Here are some other things rumbling in my mind.

• I'm requiring them to include music in their intro/outro. But, I am not stipulating that it needs to be royalty free. Basically, I figure 50cent won't care one jot if some kid in Saudi Arabia is using 10 seconds of one song to do some school assignment. Is this bad??? Not that I care a whole lot. to be frank. But, maybe I'm just not well informed on the issue.


• I want to survey the kids and get some more data on how they are feeling about podcasting and whether they feel they're improving their oral fluency. But, I'm not sure what to ask, and how to formulate the questions/answers. I guess I should get that data collected this week. Kind of a halfway checkpoint. Any suggestions??


• as for data, does anyone else feel like their collecting a jumble of data that they can hopefully distill into something meaningfull when the time comes??? I guess I'd rather err on the side of having more than enough data and chopping some. Then again, a 6 page paper doesn't allow for a whole heap of data to be analysed and reported on. (hallelujah)

That's about all for now. In case you were wondering, I do not have the podcasts on itunes. I'm just uploading them to a general "Great Reading" blog, courtesy of Wordpress. Here's the address if you're at all curious. http://www.greatreading.wordpress.com/

tata.

New Week, New Reflections

This post will be a short reflection on what has been accomplished so far, and what I need to think about for the next week.

Students spent last week working in groups in the lab on their first blog. Today's the day that the first section hands in their first podcast. That means that individuals will begin working on their own projects at home. The first individual pcast is due next Saturday.

As for data collection, I'm considering putting together another survey to gather their opinions about podcasting. I'm not sure what exactly I'll ask on it. I think I'd like to find out if they enjoy pcasting, and if they feel it's positively impacting their oral reading. I wonder if they see a connection between the activity and its purpose.

As it is now, the TIP is underway and I basically have the next 2 weeks to watch and see how it develops.

Oh yeah, last week I took some video footage of the kids working in the lab. It should provide the visuals for the MM presentation. I plan on creating an audio track that plays over the video that combines my voice with snippets from their podcasts. The theme of my MM presentation is "change", or "progress", or "growth" or something like that , and hopefully I'll be able to show how student's oral reading ability improved over the course of the study. I think it should come together nicely.

Smooth Sailing...with tech? Not likely!

I'm sure glad that I'm implementing my TIP in an elective subject because the pressure to fulfill a set curriculum is non existent and that's good, considering that my podcast creation schedule is bogging down. Oh well, I think I will still be able to have students create 3 total podcasts over the span of this TIP.

So far things have been going pretty well. I've collected the following data;

• Words Correct Per Minute score
• An initial score that rates their expression, pacing, volume, and clarity
• Survey results that focused on their feelings and attitudes regarding reading aloud
• my own reflections in this blog
• video footage of my kids recording their podcasts - some pretty good footage, I think!

After having worked with 2 classes of middle schoolers, here's what I'm noticing;

• the gr. 8 students are better at using the technology, but are more adept at reading and don't benefit as much from the practice of oral reading
• When working in groups in school, some kids are reluctant to read with apropriate volume and expression. Others have no problem with it.
• I don't see the required effort on the kids part to really strive to produce a flawless oral reading performance. I think their just happy to get their track recorded, regardless of whether they've made some mistakes.
• I think that I'll get better results when they do their individual projects next week, because they'll be doing the recording at home, away from the pressure of their peers. They'll also have only one thing to focus on and I think they'll hear the areas that need fixing more easily.
• I feel that I'll need to hammer home to kids that the major focus of my assessment is on their oral reading ability.
• I'm wondering if I should allow them to mess with the pitch of their voice, or will that hamper my assessment of their fluency? I think it won't, so I'll let them, besides, why should I be a killjoy?
• My kids were mortified that I posted their podcasts on our class wordpress site. Interestingly, the gr. 6's were less concerned - I guess they are less self conscious because puberty hasn't hit yet.
• I think my early take on whether podcasting improves oral reading fluency is that traditional, non-techy approaches are probably more effective. But maybe that's my old school bias coming out...and maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised.

Thanks for reading my rambling thoughts!