Thing #12

I do subscribe to a few podcasts like "This American Life" (http://feeds.thisamericanlife.org/talpodcast)or and "Splendid Table" (http://americanpublicmedia.publicradio.org/podcasts/xml/splendid_table/kitchen_questions.xml) from NPR. I prefer to download them weekly onto my Ipod for listening at a later time. From the list you provided, others caught my fancy such as the "Princeton Review "(http://www.princetonreview.com/vocabminute/default.asp, "Science Friday" (http://www.sciencefriday.com/feeds/radio/), "Science from Scientific American" (http://www.sciam.com/podcast/#%7C60-Second)and others. I think these would be great to introduce students to. It shows them the variety of sources one can obtain information and they get to hear it from others besides their teachers.

One podcast that I found incredibly interesting was from the State Superintendent Mike Flanagan titled the "Haunting Impact of School Dropouts". I, personally, am a Flanagan devotee. He doesn't put on airs, but instead speaks frankly and from the heart as if he's sitting at your dinner table. He talks of the shame the whole educational community must share in contributing to the crisis. Unfortunately, it is not a small problem but no one wants to talk about it. Many school districts do their best to try and hide the numbers. He makes a plea to "get over the numbers game" and educate EVERY child. He informs the listener that when students who dropped out but did return reported that the reason many of them left in the first place was the lack of relationships. He further highlights the need for smaller high schools in order to help construct those needed relationships. So, I guess I'll have to add him to my monthly podcasts. If you have an interest, try http://www.michigan.gov/mde/0,1607,7-140-37818_45256---,00.html.

Now, just imagine that you assign everyone a topic and have them research it and then podcast their results on the class wiki. Students would surely love that assignment and might even complete it on time :-) What a win-win situation for students who don't like to write or for students with learning disabilities. Now everyone gets to participate on an equal playing field.