My Favorite Podcasts

I began my search for Podcasts at the Education Podcast Network. I didn’t like it there. I couldn’t quite understand the site and it was hard for me to find what I wanted. I just recently got an iPod so I went on iTunes. I started my search thinking I would subscribe to a few; believe me it did not end in that way. I ended up subscribing to about 10 different Podcasts. I am totally addicted to them now. I listen to them at school during my prep time while I am working on things in the classroom or at the copier. There were a few that I subscribed to that I did not find interesting at all, but there were two of them that I really enjoyed.
The first podcast that I enjoyed was Kid Cast. You can read up on it and listen to some podcasts at http://www.intelligenic.com/blog/. These podcasts are by Dan Schmit. My favorite one that I listened to was about podcasting and fieldtrips. He gave some wonderful tips on how to make the fieldtrip more effective for the students and less about just getting away from the classroom for the day. Dan felt that it was first important to set a purpose for the field trip weeks before the field trip is scheduled. He also thought it was important to rethink the KWL chart and make it into a WTWT chart. Why are we studying this? What do we think we know? What do we want to know? What are we ready to teach? He also gave a great idea of creating a sound seeing tour for your students.
I also wanted to check out a podcast that was created by students. I decided to check out Willow Web since it was highly recommended in a few different articles that I had read. It you want to check out some of their podcasts go to http://www.mpsomaha.org/willow/Radio/. I thought it was very well put together and each student sounded very interested in the topics and very animated. It seemed to really give them great practice on their speaking skills. I found their podcasts more interesting than most of the ones I listened to that were done by adults. It gave me some great ideas on ways I can incorporate podcasting into my classroom.