Podcasting and the writing process

Do you ever go through the writing process and your students struggle to come up with ideas and topics? Well try podcasting! Thinking back to multimodal learning, students can think their ideas out better and not feel the pressure it has to be perfect.

Before, podcasts have been used as the end result of a writing piece. But now research is showing, it can help students and guide their thinking as a way of talking out their ideas. We know part of prewriting as brainstorming, clustering, freewriting, and journaling. But now they can be used at a later stage in the process. Students do not have that fear of thinking while talking out their ideas. This also gives them confidence and ways to assert themselves.

Students can perform their podcasts in different ways. Some may choose report form, some interview styles, and some multiple roles, where they have other students fill out roles. You want to try this out early on in the year, and have students work together at first. You can even have them write out their script so they have an idea what they are going to say. They should make sure it's not too long and just give an overview of their topic. To make it even more fun, you can use a program to work with and add sound to it. Once they are made, it's a good idea to listen to them in class, so the students can help each other and give advice.

It's definitely something to look into and try out! You may even want to join in the fun and make one yourself for a lesson you are going to teach!