Invasion of the Pod People

Using podcasts in a high school journalism class will allow students to be exposed to broadcasting their news stories to an audience. Colleges and some high schools have radio stations which allow students to create radio shows and play music for students across campus. Podcasts will allow high school students with limited resources to have the same experience as campuses with radio broadcasting capabilities. According to Ricardson, “About $100 and an Internet connection is all you need to start doing regular radio shows with your students” (pg. 115). As the instructor I will find podcasts created by high school students and subscribe to them in order to expose my students to various existing podcasts. By subscribing to podcasts, as mentioned by Richardson, iTunes will automatically check for and provide me with new episodes to download and listen to (pg. 114). As a class, we can listen to existing high school podcasts and we can identify sections we would like implement into our own podcast. By collecting ideas from existing podcasts and brainstorming original ideas we can then develop a storyboard for the podcast we will begin broadcasting. As a class, we must decide if we want to do a class podcast, group podcasts, or individual podcasts. I would suggest a class podcast which will focus on specific topics on certain days of the week. For example, Mondays can be an entertainment segment, which can include weekend movie reviews. Sports and news segments can also be broadcast on separate days and this will give each group adequate time to plan their segment for each week. A podcast will allow students to showcase their segments to the entire student body, as well as, teachers, parents, and surrounding communities.