Podcasting to Improve Writing

EyePod (Revised)
Originally uploaded by LeggNet.

(Cross-posted from Beyond School)

Real quick: for the 1001 Flat World Tales project, we had each writer record and podcast him/herself reading the first draft for an audience of one: him/herself (gender pronouns stink).

Podcasting for self-criticism. I know it's not new, but it's so easy now. And it seemed to help the young writers hear the parts of their writing that needed improvement. Here's one student reflection:

The first thing came to my mind was that I had extremely simple and frequent grammar mistakes. I was kind of embarrassed when I heard it. Also, ideas and details sound incomplete and insights are shallow in depth; it was just shallow that proves not much thinking and brainstorming. I should work on 'showing' since my second draft 'told' everything. It sounded like a lecture about Korean cultures. Well, it was embarrassing to listen to my own podcast anyways.

It's all so easy now. Odeo, Podomatic. Students pick it up quickly, often without needing the teacher to know anything about it at all. How many teachers realize how easy it is to do this sort of thing?

Just thought it was worth a share.

(Photo credit: "EyePod (Revised)" by LeggNet on Flickr.)

1001 Tales Update: Listen to Jessica's Student Tale

[Cross-posted from Beyond School]

Regular readers have met Jessica (grade 9) before, in a post featuring her experiment with teaching a grammatically stylistic sentence pattern via a YouTube presentation.

She's the first, now, of all 130 of the 1001 Flat World Tales writers, to learn how to podcast and embed her own reading of her own second revision of her work-in-progress. One of the "emerging talents" I mentioned a couple posts ago.

I thought I would share her story. She's setting the standard. And she set up the Podomatic podcast without teacher hand-holding. Seems she self-taught by following my own podcast to its Podomatic home, reading directions, and getting it done. Thank Nature for genes like hers: her example should create a ripple effect among her peers--"trickle-down learning"?

She made this with the disadvantage of not having a Mac with GarageBand, so there's no music loops (though she did add a nice photo to her product). But the story itself, and Jessica's oral interpretation of it, stand on their own anyway.

Remember, it's only her second draft. We haven't workshopped voice, word choice, sentence fluency, or grammar. Drop a comment to her here and I'll pass it on. And see her page on the high school 1001 Flat World Tales wiki to read her story. She made some smart revision choices as she read, which you can see if you read along as she recites. She heard the parts of the text that didn't work, reflected on improvements apparently, and just made them orally.

Which is the whole point of this podcast exercise.


Click here to get your own player.

Podcast Part 2: More Conversation with Chris Watson

[From the Podcast notes on iTunes:]

Chris Watson, HS English teacher at Punahoe High School in Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, and Clay Burell of Korea International School in Seoul, Rep. of Korea, discuss the following topics in relation to their cross-world classroom collaboration on the 1001 Flat World Tales wiki world-wide writing workshop:

• Student publishing process
• Effective student blogging
• Diigo
• "This I Believe" podcast project
• Informal Prof Devt through Skype
• Using Library Thing for English classes

1001teachers: Chris Watson, part 2: Language Arts and the Read-Write Web


Click here to get your own player.