I chose to use Anchor for my podcast recording. While I spent time last summer and this week giving Garage Band a chance, I found it so much more complicated that Anchor. For the purposes of the typical classroom podcast, Garage Band is too advanced in my mind.

On the other hand, Anchor seems to be a podcast tool of choice for many educators. I have been using it since last summer and find it to be very accessible, user-friendly, and perfect for intro-level podcast recording students.

HERE is a link to my podcast, a book review of Kazuo Ishiguro’s new novel Klara and the Sun.

There are so many possibilities for podcasts in the language classroom, from final products for cross-curricular inquiry projects to theme-based group projects to providing an authentic task for students to interact and interview each other. While some teachers favour having a specific script, I really encourage students to have key ideas, language structures and vocab for each segment but to allow for some authentic conversation. This to me is what a real podcast should be, and also more closely mimics real conversations, which we are always trying to prepare our language students for.

My question for TLs and teachers is how can we help students to prepare for a podcast recording without them fully writing out a script? What scaffolds or structure can we offer to help students sketch out a podcast plan and consider what language structures and vocab they may need to be successful?

References

British Colombia Ministry of Education (2020) BC’s New Curriculum: Critical and

Reflective Thinking . Retrieved by

https://curriculum.gov.bc.ca/competencies/thinking/critical-and-reflecti e-thinking

The Garage Band Guide (2021) GarageBand Tutorial for Beginners Top 5 Tips

The Garage Band Guide (Website). Retrieved from https://thegaragebandguide.com/garageband-tutorial-for-beginners-5-things-you-need-to-know

Adame, D. (2020) A Studio At Your Fingertips: 5 Apps Teachers Are Using To Make Student Podcasts. National Public Radio. https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510354/student-podcast-challenge

Common Sense Education (2016) What is the SAMR Model? [Video] Youtubehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9b5yvgKQdqE&list=PL8TjVyuBdsCmZeSjU-l4qCpX11XENxsRi