Podcasting on a Snow Day

Last year, we established the practice of having a standing 10 a.m. meeting for all administrators on snow days.  The goal is to work on issues that we might otherwise not have time to discuss when school is in session as we are rushed to get back to the buildings or department business.

On Friday, while most Saline Area School students and staff were getting a 24-hour extension of our winter break, the administrative team was learning the basics of podcasting. For those who read this blog regularly, you will recall that I have attempted a couple podcasts as a method to communicate about projects and issues with in Saline Area Schools.  The goal for our session on Friday was three fold – first, to provide the administrative team with information on how podcasts are being used to deliver information.  Second, to develop the basic skills to produce their own podcast.  Lastly, was to think about how our instructional staff might want to use podcasting to engage students in academic content and express their creativity.

Linked below is an example of a podcast that Mr. Nate Bush, a teacher at Saline High School, produced for his Digital Photography course.  Click here to watch and listen to Mr. Bush’s podcast.

The session went very well and I learned a few things about the group.  The first being that they become distracted by cool new technologies as much as our students do – picture the room full of administrators working to take their pictures using Photo Booth on their Mac laptops!

We used GarageBand to produce the audio content then added some pictures and uploaded to iTunes.  Since we were all in the same room, the audio was noisy and we all used a similar script – so our finished products were not for public consumption.  However, look for a podcast coming soon from a Principal or Director near you.