Mother’s Day/Special Someone Padcasts
As a mother I know how special your own child’s voice can be. I’m also in the stage of my life when my sons’ voices are drastically changing and I wish I could hear their little voices say “Momma” one my time. This week in our class my students captured their voices and created a special memory for a special woman in their life. Yes, I had to be very respectful that not every student in my room had a mom to celebrate. Each child found someone in their life that they would like to send a special message to and they created a padcast. We started the week by listening to podcasts from previous years. Yes, this is a task I’ve done before but this time we used the Garageband app on the iPad instead of the iMac. We deconstructed the previous years podcasts and celebrated strengths in the podcasts. Together we listed the features of the podcast. (introduction, character trait with proof, a special memory, closing and music or sounds) These are very short padcasts but it gets right to the point. In the past this task took two weeks to do because I only had one iMac in the classroom and to record each voice took a long time. This year I had to colearn the app GarageBand on the iPad. I was a little frustrated in the beginning of the week because I didn’t quite understand how to begin. There were several setting I had to change each time I started a new padcast. We had to lengthen the track from 8 to 26 for recording. I had to take off the countdown beeping for recording. Once we figured this out, it was a breeze. I marveled at how quickly my students shorted sound tracks. When we worked on the iMac in previous years it took the kids a long time to navigate the mouse and cut or shorten music. My students are so efficient on the iPads, they quickly moved around tracks, double clicked to delete or shorten music. I was amazed. It did take some time to sync all of the padcasts to the iMac and then I burned individual CDs with each individual padcast. I can visualize the smiles and warmth on each person’s face as they open the CD. The students are so impressed with this finished product and I know it will be specially memory that will be kept for some time. Some of my previous families have told me that they saved their podcasts to their iPhones or iPods. They told me when they have a bad day, they click on their child’s podcast and take a minute to remember what is really important-family!
Here are a few samples of their padcasts. Please remember they are in grade 2 and 3. They are only 7 and 8 years old. Enjoy!
May 6th, 2011 at 5:56 pm
Wow Angie!! These are fantastic. Your students should be so proud of themselves, and I’m inspired to try something new for Mother’s Day next year. Thanks for the great idea!
Aviva
May 6th, 2011 at 10:56 pm
Your students’ podcasts brought a smile to my face. Don’t you just love what you can do with GarageBand. I’ll have to try it with my iPad.
May 8th, 2011 at 5:59 pm
Great job on your podcasts! I really liked the idea of creating a mother’s day message and I am sure all the moms/special ladies will treasure these recordings. Also thanks for sharing that technology is not always smooth at the start but well worth the effort in the end!
Mme Sek
Primary teacher in Ontario, Can.
May 8th, 2011 at 6:18 pm
Thanks for your comment. Tech is suppose to make our lives easier but the initial implementation can be rocky.
I’m sure today many special ladies appreciated the recorded comments from their children.