Teaching to reach every single student

I am in the middle (well I will be in the middle once Spring Break ends) of another round of podcasting with my middle school science students. This time, we are working together to prepare review materials to close out our unit on Reproduction and Development.

Some highlights (for now): I have a group preparing a video podcast which is an interpretive dance illustrating the human female reproduction system; another group is doing some hand animation for a video podcast on the human male reproductive system; and another group preparing a rap celebrating asexual reproduction.

In the middle of all this comes this article from the San Luis Opispo Times, describing a course in a local school teaching podcasting:

They’ll develop a variety of skills while working with new technology. “Public speaking is involved, audio editing, script writing, organization and presentation,” Bissell said. “They’ll be introducing background sounds like they do on NPR sometimes, to make it a little bit more exciting, and using background music, too.” After the students create their podcasts, they will upload them to the school’s Web site for downloading by the general public. Bissell has several ideas that he wants to suggest to the class, including an interview with the oldest person in their family, tutorials on how to repair or construct something, and a video of their favorite hobby. San Luis Obispo Tribune | 04/01/2007 | Atascadero High curriculum: Reading, writing and podcasting

The thing that excites me the most about this is what happens next. What worlds open up for the students now that they have this set of tools? How do they choose to explore and document their world(s)? And how will they share those explorations with th erest of us?