Participants will gain in-depth understanding of how podcasting can be used to support a program of dynamic, cost effective professional development for a variety of educators. Based on well over a year’s experience in developing and refining Fordham University’s ‘Podcast for Teachers’, a weekly professional development podcast, this session will explain how podcasting can be used to help schools and districts provide rich, individualized, highly focused professional development that is easily and broadly distributed through ubiquitous, free, online resources and easily accessed and consumed by teachers.

Podcast for Teachers has been downloaded over half a million times by educators throughout the US and beyond, and has generated a great deal of email indicating appreciation of its usefulness. It carries news about developments and opportunities in educational technology and general education, offers insightful reflections of experienced practitioners, and disseminates information about a broad range of free, proven instructional resources that can be quickly used in classrooms. This example will be used as a focus to illustrate the requisite skills and elements of podcasting including:
1) technical – audio recording, editing, and enhancing, as well as the posting of files to the host server and the generation and use of RSS feeds, 2) content development – how professional development material is effectively crafted for syndicated, web-based audio; including outlining and scripting podcasts, conducting interviews, and locating and generating supporting content. – 3) developing and interacting with a professional development audience.

The session will provide the information, insight, and inspiration needed to replicate Fordham’s approach to podcasting for professional development in participants’ home schools and districts. It will support developing leaders by showing them how to best select required resources, keeping the cost, learning curve, and difficulty level to a minimum; how to structure professional development content to get the most of the enabling and freeing aspects of podcasting; and how to employ easy to use media and syndication resources to distribute their content so that it is appealing and easily accessible by appreciative participants.

Outline

• An overview of the podcasting process including the production of audio files, their uploading to a host server, and generating RSS feeds. Discussion supported by a slide show illustrating how this can be done in a typical classroom or district office with typical resources available.

10 minutes.

• A demonstration/virtual tour of Fordham University’s Podcast for Teachers project including locating and listening to samples through pod catchers and podcast directories on the web and a look at the project’s support website, show notes, and blog.

20 minutes.

LCD supported - slide show, live web browsing, and playing MP3files from a laptop and a variety of iPods/MP3 players connected to speakers.

• A discussion of how to develop professional development content appropriate for presentation and distribution as a podcast supported by a review of a portfolio of examples.

10 minutes

LCD supported - slide show, live websites, and playing MP3files from a laptop and a variety of iPods/MP3 players connected to speakers.

• Discussion and demonstration of how to get started with a review of available free and low cost resources sufficient to support a podcast professional development program.

10 minutes

LCD supported - slide show and live websites.

• Additional Questions and Answers

10 minutes

Presenter Background

Mark Gura assists with outreach programs for Fordham University's Ed Tech Ctr. After spending 18 years as a classroom teacher, he became the Director of the Office of Instructional Technology of the NYC Board of Education where he assumed the responsibility of planning and supervising the Instructional Technology professional development for tens of thousands of teachers. Mr. Gura has published numerous articles on education and is the co-author of "Recapturing Technology for Education" and "Making Literacy Magic Happen"(an ISTE publication). He has made a great many presentations at numerous teacher professional development conferences including ASCD, NYSCATE, NCTE, NABE, and Tech to Go.

He is cohost of the popular weekly podcast Podcast for Teachers and is currently writing 2 books about emergent technologies, including podcasting.

Referenced Web Links

http://www.podcastforteachers.org/PFTresources.html

http://www.podcastforteachers.org/TechpodArchives.html