The Making of a Podcast of Epic Proportions

If you haven't noticed yet, I like a bit of hyperbole in my post titles. I find it adds a bit of dramatic anticipation that fades quickly upon reading the post. What can I say? That's how I roll!



I just finished making my first legitimate podcast and overall, things went pretty well! I figured I would have to plan ahead a bit so in talking with my parents about their upcoming retirement and move, I not only wrote questions ahead of time, I told my parents what I would ask as well. I wanted this to appear spontaneous, which worked well because my parents are pretty good at doing the acting thing. Thinking about the use of voice, this could have been a pitfall had I interviewed someone else. I know that in doing a lot of drama in the classroom, students can sound overly rehearsed in a lot of ways. Interviewing is always more interesting when it sounds spontaneous, which will require some instruction from me. This part of the podcasting was awesome. I had problems, however, with the Audio Hijack limits.

Since I had a limited amount of time to get my information, I felt that I came off as dismissive in the interview. That came to me after I got over hating the sound of my own voice. Down the line, I suppose if I did something like this with my students, I would have to make sure that our software was all legitimate because trial versions can make things really annoying. In fact, I had to cut the best thing my mom said because the program started putting noise all over the recording!

My topic for this might seem a bit off, but I thought it would be a practical way to try out the technology since I'm looking to do some type of inquiry project with my kids. This topic is something I'm actually quite interested and now have a more personal stake in this topic since it will directly involve my immediate family.

I like the idea of doing a podcast type interview instead of the standard written type because it gives kids the opportunity to roll with the punches as it were. In a written interview, I see kids write answers to their questions and then just move on. Doing it over Skype and podcasting adds the "off topic" factor to things, which can often take the interview into much cooler territory than anyone anticipated at the outset. As mentioned above, it would also be a great way to teach kids about the use of their voice. We can look at how they sound in different social situations by listening to recordings of themselves and then work to emulate those sounds depending on the topic and questions they ask in their interviews. I think that they would really enjoy this because a lot of them, I'm sure, would start to see some rather "unsavory" applications to voice manipulation. I suppose they'll start to see how I can always tell when they're lying to me!

I really enjoyed doing this assignment! I can't wait to build up the courage to now teach the technology to my students! Pray for me.

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