Creating podcasts
I just visited a french class the other day; topic; making an informative podcast to share with the rest of the class. The students were engaged and on task. My suggestion is for the student at our school to enter the “Fifth Annual Student Podcast contest” organized by The New York Times. I have written about podcasts as a method for learning, here is an article by my guest writer Kristian Otterstad Andresen.
The tasks below are copied from “The New York TImes Lesson plan“.
Lesson plan
Read this text first:
Do you listen to podcasts to find out what’s happening throughout the world? Or do you tune in to learn about sports, music or films — or simply to be entertained? Do you prefer shows with one host or multiple hosts? Are you interested in series that tell a story over many episodes, or shows that explore a new issue or interview a different guest each week?
Imagine you — or you and several of your friends — are behind the microphone. What would you talk about? What format would you use? What would be your unique podcast voice and angle?
In our Fifth Annual Podcast Contest, we invite teenagers to submit original podcasts of five minutes or less. Your creation can be about anything that interests you, in any form that you like. Our favorites will be featured on The Learning Network.
Take a look at the guidelines and related resources below. Please post any questions you have in the comments and we’ll answer you there, or write to us at LNFeedback@nytimes.com. And, consider hanging this PDF one-page announcement on your class bulletin board.
How To Submit
Students ages 11 to 19 anywhere in the world attending middle or high school can participate.
Here are submission instructions:
Student Submission Form: Middle and high school students ages 13 to 19 years old in the United States and the United Kingdom, and students ages 16 to 19 years old anywhere else in the world, can submit their own entries. If you are a student who meets these age requirements, use this submission form.
The Rules
-
Create a podcast that produces a complete listening experience with a clear beginning, middle and ending.
Beginnings often draw the listener in or provide context. Endings often provide a summary, ask a question or tease the next segment.
Your submission can be an excerpt from a longer podcast, as long as you demonstrate thoughtfulness about how you are using time. An ending can be a hard “end” of a podcast, or it can be the conclusion of a segment, or even the closing of an introduction within a longer episode.
-
You can use any podcast format or genre.
Popular podcast formats include interviews, conversations, nonfiction storytelling and fiction storytelling. Popular genres include comedy, true crime, news documentary, history, radio theater and sports. But you can choose from unlimited choices of format and genre.
-
Podcasts must be five minutes or less.
Please check the length of your audio file. (Just to be very clear, 5:01 is longer than five minutes.)
-
Your podcast must be original for this contest.
We want students to be inspired by our contests and have an opportunity to reach a wider audience for their work. If you have already published a piece, then come up with something else to submit.
In other words, if at the time of submission your work has already been published, or selected to be published, by a radio station, another podcast contest, or any other site (not including your own page or a teacher’s class page), then do not submit it to our contest.
However, after you submit to this contest, you are allowed to submit your entry to another publication or contest for possible publication.
-
Create your podcast by yourself or with a group, but please submit only one entry per student.
If you are submitting as a team, remember to include all the names of those involved. If you’re submitting as part of a team, you should not also submit as an individual.
-
Use appropriate language.
Assume your listeners are New York Times readers. No explicit language, please.
-
Be sure to use non-copyrighted sound effects or music, with some exceptions.
If you use any music or sounds effects, please list the sources in a separate field in the submission form. You cannot use copyrighted sound effects or music for the sole purpose of making your podcast sound better. Instead, you can find royalty-free music and sound effects on Freesound and SoundBible, or by doing a web search for royalty-free files. Or you can use audio editing software to create your own music or sound effects. However, there are limited fair use exceptions when you can legally use copyrighted work, such as when you are critiquing a song or reporting on a film. Read more about those exceptions to ensure that your use of copyrighted material does not infringe on copyright protections.
-
Upload your podcast to SoundCloud to make it easier for our judges to listen to your work.
We suggest that you use SoundCloud to host your podcast. However, our judges will listen to entries hosted on other podcasting sites, including Podomatic, Buzzsprout, Anchor, Spreaker and Podbean. Make sure that the track settings are set to “public,” and that you follow your hosting site’s terms of service. Note: Our judges have often had difficulty listening to podcasts hosted on GoogleDrive, so we strongly recommend you use a different method.
More info here: The New York Times