Podcasting and Preteens... It's Pretty Popular
How can librarians and teachers incorporate podcasting into their libraries and classrooms to engage students and enhance the learning environment?
Previously called, Anchor, Spotify for Podcasters, is a recording tool students can use to record a show and publish on the very well-known and popular music sharing app, Spotify. Adults and students alike are finding a new love for audio books and listening to podcasts on a variety of topics, so this is a perfect tool to incorporate in the classroom and library to draw your students into the curriculum, engage them with technology they love, and allow them to interact and learn from one another through collaboration and sharing their knowledge.
Podcasts could be used in a variety of ways:
- Book talks and student book reviews in the library
- Student spotlight to discuss topics they love and are knowledgeable in
- Involve student athletes with a sports talkshow podcast
- After researching a topic, student share what they learned, what surprised them
Spotify for Podcasters is free, provides a mobile app, allows you to enable or disable commenting for your entire show or specific episodes, add video, and add polls. I imagine having a Podcast show for the library, and have various episodes where students come on to chat about books and the world around us! Once students learn how to create a podcasts on their own, I think it will be very important to teach proper use of podcasting and include that in any digital citizenship lessons we teach.
To help with recording and background noise, I highly recommend a microphone to use while recording. I've used one of these before when recording our news show in Canva, and it worked great! You are able to record and upload your audio file to Spotify for Podcasters or you can record right in the website or app using the feature called Riverside.fm. You are also able to edit the recordings in Riverside.fm. This really takes some tinkering around with to learn all of the features and how best to use them. I watched several YouTube video tutorials to help me get started.
Image Description: This is a picture of an example of a USB microphone that can be used for podcast recording. The microphone is black and has multiple parts shown in the picture. The end has a hook to secure the microphone to the table. The stand is a z shape bracket that opens and moves to adjust height of the microphone on the other end.
Image description: The image is a screenshot of the spotify for podcasters website. Its a black background showing the recording and editing studio. You can see the transcript of the audio file, and then the audio file sound waves at the bottom. All of the editing tools are along the bottom, the top, and the sides of the screen.
How to start recording and uploading a Podcast with Spotify
This is my first time playing around with Spotify for Podcasters. It took a few practice recordings and I am still learning to edit and add music, but the website is pretty easy to use. Check out my First Podcast Episode
Image description: The image is a screenshot of the home page for my podcast, Literacy Love in the Library, on Spotify. It shows my library logo with the gray square, black circle around a stack of yellow gold books, and the title, Literacy Love in the Library around the black circle. The homescreen includes the title of the podcast and the "About" section as well as a list of episodes.
One Podcast I love to listen to and share with students is called Book Club for Kids where they discuss books they've read and even chat with the author! This is a great example to share with students prior to making our own podcast. What are some of your favorite podcasts to share with kids and teens?
Hi Emily,
ReplyDeleteWhat an interesting topic. I had no idea it was so easy to start your own podcast. I think this is a great project for schools or school libraries. A podcast dealing with school issues could be used in the same function as a school newspaper. Interested students could research school topics, have a sports report, or report the weather. I think this could get a lot of students interested in digital media.