Podcast Conferences

Each of the groups in my classroom have completed some combination of three podcasts and vlogs. So today, I sat down with each of the groups of kids and held a conference with them about the experience of developing these media. I started with the standard types of questions: what are your greatest successes? Greatest challenges? what has been improved? What still needs to be improved? But then I threw them a bit of a curve ball. I asked them that throughout the year, I've had them publish their school lives online. Between our blogs, our wiki, our math tutorial videos, and now these podcasts and vlogs, a lot of their work has been on public display. I asked them how they felt about that. I asked about the effect of an audience on their work.

The kids had a lot of interesting responses. Many of them talked about this being a motivating factor for them. They talked about having a goal to shoot for and a need to improve as they knew others would be watching, listening, and reading. Others talked about this being scary. They felt a loss of control over their content and were concerned about how their ideas were being used and perceived by others. One group of girls wondered if there were other teachers who were downloading their work to use as "bad examples" of podcasts and vlogs in their own classrooms. Another group was worried about receiving negative comments on their blogs even though they had worked very hard on a finished product that they just couldn't figure out how to improve even though they knew it was "boring."  

Other groups of kids thought it was exciting to put their work online and that they hoped other teachers and kids would be inspired by their example to work on producing their own content. They hoped their podcasts would be informative for others as they had worked very hard to research and collect information that is current and interesting. A few groups mentioned that they would like to listen and see the work of other classes, feeling sometimes alone out on the frontiers of education.

Overall, the kids were overwhelmingly positive about the experience so far, but they were concerned about losing control of their content. They wondered if others were downloading their podcasts and vlogs just to laugh at them and use in some way that they wouldn't agree with. So we talked about this. We talked about the bravery it takes to do this and "put it out there" for others to see. We talked about the trouble of being an early innovator and possibly crashing and burning. We discussed the positives and negatives of working this way honestly and openly for others to criticize. It was an interesting, timely discussion.

technorati tags: conference, podcast, vlog, classroom,

Comments

[Jeremy]

I watched a few of the vlogs -- they're fantastic. It's cool to see little vignettes of life in Snow Lake, and the kids are obviously learning all kinds of skills they might not otherwise get a chance to. They're creating a great record of who they are and what they're learning, which will take on more value as time passes. Loved the rocking soundtracks, too.