Educational Media Design II - Podcasting

Designed by Chase L. Way

To efficiently structure the self-paced learning experience and ensure instructional continuity, all tutorials are divided into a suggested series of study sessions. The modules build on one another, so learners are strongly encouraged them to complete them in the recommended sequence. If you haven't yet had the opportunity to complete Tutorials #1-7, please consider doing so before exploring this tutorial.

Why should my students learn how to podcast?

Knowing how to create a podcast is a powerful and highly marketable skill for students entering all kinds of work. Why? Consider the reasons Harvard University listed for its own students in a recent pitch for a class it regularly offers on podcasts:

"One in four Americans over the age of 12 listens to podcasts, a 200 percent increase in just the last decade. Growth is expected to continue. In a time when videos and articles are getting shorter, why are audio podcasts (averaging 45 minutes in length) becoming more popular? This course explores the power of podcasting and why seemingly everyone—businesses, news organizations, and yes, universities—wants to podcast. The first few weeks of the course focuses on exploring the main podcast categories: talk radio style, interview, narrative, and daily news podcasts. Students then learn podcasting business basics, from advertising to analytics. Along the way, students come up with their own podcast idea, analyze the potential success of their podcast, learn basic audio production and, by the end of the course, walk away with the first few episodes of a podcast."

For the purposes of this next tutorial, let's experiment with the idea that students might be able to prepare a podcast on a particular topic instead of a traditional in-class presentation. What might that do for their learning?

Tutorial Session A

Imagine what professional topic you might feel comfortable discussing in a practice podcast and/or decide what level of privacy you need for your podcast. We will be preparing a short podcast later in this tutorial.
- Note: You will need to publish your podcast in order to share it with others. This automatically makes it public. Thus, if you are concerned about your privacy, I encourage you to set up a pen name and anonymous e-mail address through Google or Yahoo. Use these to create your Anchor account.
- You can keep the content of your podcast as simple and boring as you want. You can even just say, "Test, test, 123." The goal here is just to learn how to use the technology!
Download the app for the free podcasting platform Anchor.
Create a free account on the podcasting platform Anchor.
Watch this video on how to begin a podcast through Anchor.

Tutorial Session B

Read the following articles on the educational benefits of podcasting, and why podcasts have become such a popular phenomenon in today's world.
- Laura Buckler, "8 Ways Teachers Can Leverage Podcasts As a Learning Tool."
- Ariel Stulberg, "Podcasting Is Getting Huge. Here's Why."
Experiment with recording on Anchor. Here is a super helpful tutorial video on how to do that:

Tutorial Session C

Read this great how-to article on educational podcast creation:
- Jed T. Wolpaw and Justin Harvey, "How to Podcast: A Great Learning Tool Made Simple."
Create a short demo podcast episode (max five minutes!) on Anchor.
Follow the Anchor app's prompting to add a title and image. If you wish to share it with others, just publish your podcast and click on the "share" button. It will give you the option to copy a link. You can send this link to anyone with whom you would like to share your podcast.

Tutorial Session D

Read the following article on the potential for podcasts to serve as a transformative and social justice-oriented learning tool:
- Ilyan Ferrer , Liza Lorenzetti & Jessica Shaw, "Podcasting for Social Justice - Exploring the Potential of Experiential and Transformative Teaching and Learning through Social Work Podcasts.pdf."
Write instructions for a podcasting project which your students could complete in a current or upcoming course. As always, make sure you plan this assignment to end before the student's free trial access to any necessary educational technology ends!