After my last post on creativity and being open to new ideas, I wanted to stretch my thinking and dive into the creation of a podcast.

I didn’t want this to be any old podcast, but one that focuses on student voice, kindergarten to 5th grade.

We need to encourage our students to share their voices, to know that what they say matters.

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With this in mind, I began to compile resources and possible ideas that I could bring to students.

This podcast needs to be for all students, kindergarten to 5th grade.

This book from Michael Hernandez, Podcasting, was extremely helpful for students to read. My idea is not centered around me being the editor and producer, but around students who learn to edit and produce this podcast. I was hoping that students would be interested and I found two 5th grade students who wanted to badly be co-producers, so why not! These two students worked at designing the logo of our podcast, created interview questions, and the theme too. Not only did these students become interested, other students did too. One student was interested in creating the music for the episodes and took home his ipad to work on it over the evening.

I’ve been encouraging students to share their voices and that’s exciting. Students are coming up to me and asking to be on the podcast, willing to share their voices and ideas with the world.

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This podcast will focus on students talking about books they’ve read, stories they’ve written, or things they have created. We are given an opportunity to help students explore new ways to learn and share their voices. My hope is that this podcast becomes that opportunity.

I can see the spark in the eyes of students who normally are shy when they ask to share their thoughts. Boys and girls who normally are hesitant to share, become these amazing storytellers opening doors that never would have been open.

With the first couple episodes beginning to take shape, students are learning so many new skills, audio editing, writing, communication, design, and more. That’s why we called our podcast Words by Design. Students are designing their conversations with the words they choose. How amazing is it that a 2nd grade student can share about a book, a kindergarten student can share about an interesting math problem, or a 5th grade student can share about a drawing they created. No longer will these stories stay inside our walls, but begin to percolate into the community showing others what powerful voices our students have.

What are your views on this idea? How might podcasting be used in your learning?

We have an interesting set up so far. We have a cardboard box with foam inside of it as our recording studio. The mic is connected to a computer or ipad and then we record from there. Students edit in garageband and then we are releasing the episodes through anchor.fm. If you’re interested, you can follow the podcast here at Words by Design.