Welcome to a Podcasting Guide for Educators

I like the freedom of podcasting. With podcasting, you can really mess around with the form and the format. You can do as much time as you like without having to pause for commercials.

Adam Carolla, Host of the ‘Adam Carolla Show’

We are thrilled to welcome you into the wonderful world of podcasting! A form of media that we and many others have been enjoying.

Defining Podcasts

Technically, a podcast is a digital audio file made available on the Internet for downloading to a computer or mobile device, usually available as a series. Think of a podcast like a radio for the Internet, and as it’s for the Internet, it is now MUCH MORE accessible for creatives to make and host their own podcasts, as you no longer need access to a brick and mortar radio broadcasting studio to produce and host your own show. This means it is now also much easier to access podcasts to utilize in your classroom and for both you as an educator and for your students to create their own podcasts! All you really need these days to do that is a computer or mobile device and access to the Internet.

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What to Expect from A Podcasting Guide for Educators

To help you on your journey as an educator in podcasting, we have created this guide, which is intended to open up your minds to the possibilities that podcasts and podcasting present in education, give you and your students a process and the tools with which to begin podcasting and to explore how different educators are utilizing podcasts and podcasting with their students. Included within (see the sidebar menu), you will find:

• Guide to Creating Student Podcasts
  • This section is geared to grade schools.
  • ‘Podcasting with your Students’ and the ‘Case Study’ are intended for teachers.
  • ‘Podcast Pre-Production for Students’, ‘Podcast Production for Students’, and ‘Podcast Post-Production for Students’ are written for students. Feel free to direct your students directly to this guide to use in creating their podcasts or re-purposing it for yourself. This material is licensed with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license, meaning that others can remix, adapt, and build upon our work non-commercially, as long as they credit us and license their new creations under the identical terms.
• Guide to Creating an Educators Podcast
  • This section is geared to educators of all levels creating their own podcasts, including the process and the technology to support them in creating their own podcasts.

How to Work Through the Podcasting Guide for Educators

While you can work through this guide sequentially from start to finish, you are also welcome to move through it in the order of your choosing, utilizing the sidebar menu and jumping to the sections that are of interest or of need to you.

Get a Richer Experience Through Engagement

Throughout this guide, you will find discussion prompts and other activities to reflect on, engage around, and ask questions. For those that joined us during the week of November 7th, 2021, we shared an invite to join us live in the studio for two live broadcast recordings of the Encounters in EdTech podcast – a podcast collective created by UBC MET alumni and current students. Below are the replays from those two podcasts:

• November 12, 2021 at 8 am PST / 9 am MST / 11 am EST – Podcasting with Kids (Grade School Educator focus)

• November 12, 2021 at 1 pm PST / 2 pm MST / 4 pm EST – Utilizing Podcasts with Adult Learners

For these podcasts, we utilized a new interactive, mobile podcasting app – Fireside Chat, that was recently publicly launched. While the live and recorded podcast can be listened to on all mobile devices, if you wish to participate in the live studio audience within the app, you need access to an iPhone or iPad, as the app is currently only available on iOS devices, while the Android App is set for release in 2022 (the downside of brand new technology).

While the live recordings of the above shows are now done, if you’d like to be in the studio for a future live taping of the Encounters in EdTech Podcast, utilize our Guest Code:

You are also invited to past and future episodes of Encounters in EdTech, which you will find via Erica Hargreave’s Fireside Studio. Coming up soon on Encounters in EdTech will be an episode with MET Alumni Danielle Dubien on Trauma-Informed Pedagogy.