CourseCasting Pre-AP Math in Oklahoma
Colin White is a high school math teacher in Mid-Del Public Schools, Oklahoma. Colin is among a select group of Mid-Del teachers on the district “PodSquad.” PodSquad members have volunteered to participate in intensive professional development workshops focused on podcasting in the past four years, and have received Apple laptops as well as access to the district’s Podcast Producer server which facilitates minimal-click publication of audio and video podcasts for student use and access.
To create a recorded podcast of class lectures, Mid-Del teachers run the application “Podcast Capture” on their MacBook or MacBook Pro laptops and connect to the Podcast Producer server. Audio with multimedia slides, audio-only, or audio and video is then captured and published to the teacher’s website following the lesson. A professional looking “intro” is added to the front of each recorded podcast by Podcast Producer automatically (including the school district’s logo and copyright statement,) and each episode is added to the class’ RSS feed. Students in classes like Mr. White’s Pre-AP Math Analysis course can subscribe to these “course-casts” using iTunes or another “podcatcher” software application. Episodes can also be played directly over the web using any web browser. Students can replay entire class lectures, or fast forward to a particular point in the lesson to review it as needed. Recent posts from Mr. White’s class include “Complex Solutions of Equations” from April 13th, “Complex Numbers” from April 10th, and “Law of Cosines” from April 9th. All class lecture episodes are available on Mr. White’s wiki page on the Mid-Del podcast producer server, and are also included in his class’ automatically-generated RSS feed.
Mid-Del Schools’ use of podcasts was featured in the Oklahoma City News9 report from March 2, 2009, “Mid-Del Podcasts Capture Students’ Attention.”
Mid-Del Public Schools is one of the most innovative districts in the state of Oklahoma, and continues to blaze a trail of excellence when it comes to helping empower both teachers and students to utilize digital media to enhance learning. In addition to the Pod Squad, under the leadership of Instructional Technology Director Dr. Don Wilson as well as Assistant Superintendent Dr. Katherine Hughes, Mid-Del has created an an instructional learning portal for teachers using the free learning management system Moodle (learn.mid-del.net) The district continues to play a leading role in the statewide digital storytelling and oral history project “Celebrate Oklahoma Voices,” and is using the micro-blogging platform Twitter to keep parents and other community constituents informed about district news. (Follow @middelnews) District teachers have used the free website Ning to create their own learning community, “Mid-Del Tech Geeks.” It is refreshing and inspiring to see the positive difference visionary leaders can have in a school district like Mid-Del!
Kudos to leaders in Mid-Del Public Schools for finding so many ways to effectively leverage technology’s potential to open new doors of learning for students and teachers alike!
For additional background about the evolution of Mid-Del’s use of Podcast Producer, see my April 2008 podcast, “Solving the Publish At Will Challenge for K-12 Teachers with Podcast Producer.”
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