NASA Do It Yourself Podcasts

If you ever wanted to interview an astronaut, you need to check out NASA Do It Yourself Podcasts.

NASA is providing video and audio clips and encouraging students to remix their own podcasts. Right now, students can create podcasts on Lab Safety, Newton's Laws, and Spacesuits.

NASA also publishes a blog devoted to these podcasts.

SOUND IN!

I just finished helping a class of 4th graders do a 4 slide PowerPoint on a famous athlete. The students did a great job and (horror of horrors) I let them add sounds - it is amazing how much the students loved the silly and annoying sounds in PowerPoint STILL! I thought ya know, maybe PowerPoint has been out for long enough that the novelty of the canned sounds would have dissipated - turns out NO!

Kids love SOUND!

They love the audio - we have to work harder to get classes podcasting, vodcasting, using visual communicator and anything else we can think of - we SHOULD be tapping this!

I'm working with a group of 1st graders next week who will be recording their own ending to a story. The more I think about it the more I want to not only allow them to record their own voices but maybe use this time to also record their own special effects! How cool would that be!

Free Audio Books?

LibriVox (librivox.org) provides free audiobooks from the public domain. The catalog includes books, short works, historical documents, poetry, children’s lit, and non-fiction. Worried about the copyright? All of the works are in the public domain and are not covered by copyright. In addition, Librivox has chosen not to copyright anything they do. “This means others can use our recordings however they wish, including for commercial purposes.”

Science Podcasts - Gotta Minute

So you want to use podcasts to help your students learn science. But don't have time to listen through all the podcasts to see if they are worth while? Check out Scientific American Magazine. They offer a daily podcast called 60-Second Science. These are quick reports and commentary from the world of science. It only takes a minute!

These would be great for warm ups/bellringers or as a catalyst to journal writing. They are high interest as well, at least IMHO. The most recent (10/27) 60-Second Science podcast discusses vampires of New England.

You can listen to these podcast from their homepage or subscribe to them in iTunes (iTS link). Also published is a weekly Science Talk podcast (iTS link), where scientists and journalist discuss the latest developments is science and technology The homepage also features a blog, videos, and a place at ask a scientist a question.

science podcasts education k12