TL;DR:

• Tai Poole hosts an acclaimed podcast exploring diverse topics with experts, inspiring students to start their own podcasts, requiring minimal equipment but vast creativity.
• Podcasting develops critical skills: problem-solving, tech proficiency, and the ability to articulate ideas, aligning with modern learning standards.
• Creating student podcasts empowers learners, fosters global connections, and instills digital citizenship by engaging in authentic, diverse, and ethical content creation for broad audiences.

Tai Poole is fifteen years old and has been hosting Tai Asks Why?, a Webby-winning podcast, since he was 11. Each episode is under 30 minutes and delves into thought-provoking topics with insight from experts and scientists. Examples of topics include: How much is too much screen time, why do we laugh, and why do we love junk food so much? Tai is one of many young people starting their own podcasts, building an audience and brand around them.

Sharing student-created podcasts with the world enriches the learning experience for the listeners as well as the podcast creators. Click To Tweet

Why not get your students in on the podcasting action?

You don’t need fancy equipment to get started. Just an idea. Producing a podcast requires students to articulate an idea, as they showcase their understanding and learning. Students can create them independently or in collaborative groups. The content can be serious or light-hearted, fictional or grounded in truth. Podcasts cover a wide variety of subjects including science, current events, history, fan fiction, and storytelling. If they aren’t sure where to begin, they can listen to published podcast examples to help determine the direction and format.

Podcasting Builds Skills

Students who produce a podcast become problem solvers and enhance their technology skills. The ISTE Standards for Students call for students to express themselves in a variety of formats and platforms. Throughout the podcasting process, students apply research, writing, and verbal skills to communicate a message. When students create their own podcasts, they act as knowledge constructors and empowered learners.

Here are three more reasons to create podcasts with students.

1. Empower Learners

Most of the information students receive is in multimodal formats: digital, print, visual, and audio. Podcasts are tools for learning information and content. Podcasts come in a variety of formats and topics. My students are currently listening to the murder mystery podcast series Tig Torres: Lethal Lit as a mentor text for their own mystery stories they are creating.

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2. Initiate Global Connections & Collaboration

Creating podcasts for a wider audience is engaging and authentic. The New York Times and National Public Radio both host annual podcasting contests for teens to create and record original audio material under 10 minutes on any topic. Sharing student-created podcasts with the world enriches the learning experience for the listeners as well as the podcast creators.

3. Apply Digital Citizenship

Sharing podcasts with local and global audiences requires students to create positive, safe, ethical, and legal digital behavior. Producing a podcast requires students to record and edit digital content. Students are required to choose sound effects, record interviews, and include sound bites from experts to add engaging features that draw the listeners’ attention. Podcasting depends on creative communication.

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About Michele Haiken

Michele Haiken, Ed.D is an educator, author, and blogger. She has been teaching for more than twenty four years as a middle school English teacher and an adjunct professor in New York. Michele is the co-author of the forthcoming book Creative SEL: Using Hands-on Projects to Boost Social Emotional Learning (ISTE, 2023) and author of New Realms for Writing (ISTE, 2019), Personalized Reading (ISTE, 2018), and editor of Gamify Literacy (ISTE, 2017). Michele is passionate about empowering 21st Century learners, educational technology and literacy so everyone can reach excellence. Read more on her blog theteachingfactor.com and connect with Michele on Instagram @teaching_factor and Twitter @teachingfactor.