Instructify

BY CHRISTOPHER PANNA

Who was the real inspiration for Count Dracula? What happened during the famous mutiny on the Bounty? Few things fascinate like a great story. Not only can it hook students, but a story also provides a solid framework for building understanding of other material. All you have to do is push play — the storytelling is already done thanks to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a podcast series from How Stuff Works.

Over the last few years the series has built a vast library of irresistible tales. Each one is 10-20 minutes long and presented as a conversation between two hosts. They usually begin by discussing common misconceptions resulting from media portrayals, then go on to tell the story, taking care to separate fact from fiction. With so many historical anecdotes available, it’s worth checking the archive for a podcast related to what you’re currently teaching. They’re displayed on one long webpage, so use your browser’s search tool (Ctrl-F) to find text on the page that’s relevant to what you’re looking for.

If you play a podcast in class, I’d recommend supplementing it with a few pictures to help students visualize the story. Since the podcasts are free to download in MP3 format, another option is having students listen on their computers, music players, or phones. Listening and writing comments makes a great alternative to reading for homework.

Stuff You Missed in History Class

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BY KEVIN HODGSON

As more and more states push their curriculum development towards the Common Core standards, educators will be searching for resources for developing expository writing, which is one of the main elements of the nationalized standards. The act of explaining how to do something has been a staple writing assignment for a long time. Podcasting those instructions promotes not only technology, but also requires students to focus on voice and writing for an audience.

The site One Minute How-To is a great example of how this kind of focused explanation can happen via podcasts. The guests on the show have exactly 60 seconds to explain how to do something, and the topics are pretty wide-ranging. Recent podcasts included how to publish a book using an online site called Blurb, how to throw a curve with a Wiffle ball, how to order a sandwich in Boston, and how to use podcasts in education.

There’s a real spry energy to the podcasts, which are certainly informative. The site could easily be a model for students developing their own podcasts on how to do something, which not only taps into 21st Century skills, but also gives them a chance to be the class expert on something.

One Minute How-To

BY KEVIN HODGSON

You have work past the crackle, static, and white noise of the recordings, but RadioLovers is a website that has archived old radio shows from the pre-television days. Bob Hope, Groucho Marx, and Laurel and Hardy are just a few among the classic voices kept alive at this site, which features free downloads of the files in MP3 format. RadioLovers features comedies, mysteries, science fiction, and even music programs.

If you are doing a unit around media literacy, this site might even be helpful in showing how entertainment has often been commercialized. Listen to the openings of some of these programs and you realize that the first few minutes are often used to showcase the show’s sponsors. You could easily draw some parallels to the use of product placement in various movies and television shows these days.

For students interested in podcasting, these old radio shows are valuable for learning about pacing of story, voice inflection, and the use of sound effects (which is not often a topic covered in a traditional writing class, is it?)

On the issue of copyrights, the site discloses that it believes the radio shows are now in the public domain and no longer protected. Whether that would hold up in a court of law remains to be seen (or not). Even so, these files give a glimpse of entertainment from times when writing, sound effects, and voice were the prevailing means for delivering a stories to a large audience.

RadioLovers

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BY CHRISTOPHER PANNA

It’s surprising how many teachers either don’t know about textbook companion websites or don’t bother to check them out. These are websites that publishers offer to accompany the material in a textbook. They vary in quality, but if you have a good one, your students can access some really useful supplemental material. Check the first few pages of your book and see if there’s a web address. Your companion website may have some of these features:

Summaries

A fantastic tool to improve comprehension or help with review. Summaries may take the form of outlines, slideshows, or even MP3s (think audio books). Your students can download audio summaries to their smartphones or iPods, and while they won’t start rocking out to physics or world history, they’ll be able to listen anywhere and anytime.

Interactives

Whether maps, diagrams, timelines, or games, these activities can be used in the classroom or for students to review at home. They’ll most likely be organized into the same sections and use the same vocabulary terms as your book.

Quizzes

The online medium makes quizzes more engaging, as they may have sounds, graphics, or extra factoids after each question. But the most useful feature is score reporting via email, which allows students to send their quiz scores to you. My students take the quiz after they read and only send me their score once they achieve 100%. That might mean doing it several times, but they always come out with a better understanding of what they read.

So take a look online — there could be a powerful resource waiting for you. I’ve only described some of the tools your companion website may have. I’d also recommend spending a few minutes of class showing everything a companion site offers. If your students like what they see, they may start using it even when you don’t ask them to.

Photo credit: wohnai on Flickr.

BY KEVIN HODGSON

Let’s say you have an audio file but you only want a piece of it, not the whole thing. How do you remove just a few seconds of audio from a larger file? Online MP3 Cutter does exactly that, and does it well.

Online MP3 Cutter allows you to quickly and easily take an MP3 file and cut a section out of it. The entire process takes about 10 seconds, and best of all, you don’t lose an iota of sound quality in the process.

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BY KEVIN HODGSON

If you can spare five minutes, you can learn all about technology and the classroom. This is the idea behind Mark Barnes’ Learn It In 5 website, and I have to say the site does what it says. I watched a short video tutorial about using Twitter in the classroom (others focus on using YouTube, podcasting, wikis and more) and found it to be useful, simple in its explanation. and a perfect entry point for curious teachers.

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BY KEVIN HODGSON

Now approaching its 200th show, the weekly Teachers Teaching Teachers webcast (and later podcast) is a wealth of interesting discussions and resources for teachers trying to navigate ways to use technology in the classroom. Hosts Paul Allison and Susan Ettenheim invite guests each week to talk about an issue, or a technology tool, and then skillfully guide the discussions around teacher stories and reflections on the issue.

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BY JASON DON FORSYTHE

When I first saw GirlTalk Radio I was unsure what to expect — with a name like that I was thinking I might get a podcast discussing whether or not I had a case of Justin Bieber Fever (which, for the record, I don’t). But it turns out it’s anything but. GirlTalk Radio is an inspiring program that takes middle-school-aged girls and lets them interview women who are the movers and shakers in various fields of science.

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BY KEVIN HODGSON

If you have a microphone, even a cheap one, and access to the Internet, then you can create a simple podcast. Vocaroo is one such site designed for simplicity. You plug in a microphone, click the green button, and record your voice. Within seconds, you’re listening back. If you stumble over your words it’s easy enough to try a second or third take. Just click the “Record Again” button and the old file is gone, replaced by the newer one.

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BY NICK YINGLING

Lately, during my lunch break, I usually sit at my desk and drop crumbs of food into my keyboard. That’s a terribly boring way to pass your lunch hour. So, naturally, I started watching my favorite show, The Golden Girls, on a streaming TV site. The main problem now is that most sites don’t have full episodes, just the excerpts. So I dug deeper. One site that streams shows is based somewhere in Asia. There are all sorts of foreign characters bannered across the top of the screen and the subtitles can sometimes take up one-third of the screen. How cool would it be if I managed to learn to read Chinese from passively exposing myself to the subtitles on my streaming episodes of The Golden Girls during my lunch break?!

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BY BILL FERRIS

This week’s MBTN features an express flight to Mars, Web 2.0 project ideas, alternatives to book reports, and online sites where you can learn a new language. Read about all of it after the jump.

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BY NICK YINGLING

In the comments for Bill’s posting about the Stuff You Missed in History Class Podcast, I mentioned that people who enjoyed that show might also enjoy Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History. It’s a little dry and demands some attentive listening, but can be pretty rewarding if you find that you enjoy it.

Dan Carlin brings a really unusual perspective to looking at history. In one of his more sensational episodes, “History Under the Influence,” he explores how drugs and alcohol might have played a role in history. For example, have you ever considered the possibility that certain historical figures were tweaking on amphetamines or strung out on painkillers? How about asking who was drunk and possibly bi-polar? It definitely sounds irreverent, but remember that history is often written by the winners.

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BY BILL FERRIS

Students have gotten used to doing things electronically. Your classroom doesn’t have to be an exception thanks to LectureTools, a learning management thingy from the University of Michigan.

Developers designed LectureTools with huge, impersonal college lecture courses in mind. However, there’s a lot here that K-12 teachers can use, too (though some of them would probably be best suited for 1:1 laptop environments). (more…)

It’s time again for our random roundup. This month’s theme: NASA, pioneers of space and subjects of an awful lot of posts.

Do-it-yourself is in, even with podcasting at NASA!
It seems that every time you turn around these days someone’s encouraging you to complete a DIY project.  Why pay for someone else to do it when you can do it yourself?  Apparently, NASA has the same attitude on its website on Do-It-Yourself Podcasts.

Set the controls for the closest planet to the sun: NASA Mission to Mercury
This site includes up-to-the-minute clocks that record the elapsed time of the mission as well as the Orbit Insertion time. Watch the actual August 3, 2004 launch of Messenger from mission control. You can take your class through a tour of images already taken by Messenger as it zooms toward Mercury.

Blast Off with the NASA Kids’ Club
NASA Kids’ Club is a great way to learn more about space exploration. It’s got great pictures, games and activities that will pique the interest of space-minded kids. As a no-cost way to learn about the space program, the NASA Kids’ Club is the Right Stuff.

Observe NASA’s Earth Observatory
What if we were able to turn our telescopes around and get a closer look at what is happening right below our feet? The folks at NASA have done just that with their Earth Observatory site. Teachers, head right for the Experiments tab and give your students interactive ways to study global warming and plant biomes around the world. If you love reading blogs (and I know you do!), check out the Expedition to Siberia blog that offers almost daily updates and pictures of this fascinating trip.

Cool satellite image from the inauguration
Check out this great picture from the presidential inauguration. As the GeoEye-1 satellite hurtled through the cosmos,  it took this snapshot to commemorate the historic occasion. That’s a lot of people! Not only that, I now know the roof of the Capitol is tarheel blue.

Observe Mars in 3D
Still have some of those promotional 3D glasses kicking around from after the Superbowl? Fire up one of NASA’s 3D image galleries to take your students on a tour of Mars.

It seems that every time you turn around these days someone’s encouraging you to complete a DIY project.  Why pay for someone else to do it when you can do it yourself?  Apparently, NASA has the same attitude on its website on Do-It-Yourself Podcasts.

Essentially, this website is a hub for high-quality, NASA-created video clips, audio files, and still images that you or your students can download to mash up with your own files to create a finished podcast (or vodcast).  The topics NASA offers for download are not all-inclusive;  currently you can download media about lab safety, Newton’s Laws, sport science, and spacesuits. Once downloaded, you can use various editing software programs (such as Animoto, which we blog about here, or the video editing software already on your computer such as Windows Movie Maker) to create your podcast.  Once the podcast is complete, NASA gives you permission to publish it in any way you want.  It could be a neat showcase of student work on a class or school website.

If you’re a teacher and you think this is a great idea but don’t really know where to start, the website also offers a DIY Podcasting Blog. The blog has some pre-posted ideas about how to use the website to make podcasts and videos in your classroom and it encourages teachers to share how they’ve used the site in their own classrooms via comments (also, here is a post we did on producing videos in the classroom). Overall, NASA seems to offer a great way to get started with podcasting using some very high-quality multimedia resources. So get your students out there DIY-ing some podcasts and vodcasts. -REBECCAH HAINES

Do-It-Yourself Podcasts

DIY Podcasting Blog

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