Podcast: Owls and Ornithology with Emma
This is a podcast (an audio recording) I created with my ten year old daughter Emma about her fascination with owls, how she got interested in them, and what she's learned about them (the image you see above is a quick sketch of Emma's "logo" owl drawing). She'a a very bright girl (if I do say so myself), and as my wife and I have taken charge of our kids' education through homeschooling, it has been a joy to help our kids find topics they're interested in, and encourage them to explore. We try to let our kids, the learners. lead the way with what they want to learn, rather than focusing on "depositing" knowledge into them from a set curriculum. We feel like we have a lot in common with the "hackschooling" approach described by 13 year old Logan LaPlante in his popular TEDx talk (though we're nowhere near as cool as his parents seem to be :-).
I made this podcast using the SoundCloud app on my phone, but there are lots of other tools and services that make recording and publishing a podcast easy (like Chirbit or Audioboo). We recorded the interview in my car (which can make a great impromptu sound booth), and it automatically uploaded to the SoundCloud service. From there, it was simple to grab the embed code and insert it into this page.
I can see us using a podcasts a lot more as we explore different ways of learning with our kids. There's something easy and natural about just having a conversation about a topic, and it's easy to hear the excitement and enthusiasm in their voices as you talk about things they have learned. Web and device based tools make it easy to make a podcast, and I'll likely be asking our kids to make more podcasts about things they're learning. Creating podcast as a digital artifact of learning is a a great way to construct and share knowledge.
I made this podcast using the SoundCloud app on my phone, but there are lots of other tools and services that make recording and publishing a podcast easy (like Chirbit or Audioboo). We recorded the interview in my car (which can make a great impromptu sound booth), and it automatically uploaded to the SoundCloud service. From there, it was simple to grab the embed code and insert it into this page.
I can see us using a podcasts a lot more as we explore different ways of learning with our kids. There's something easy and natural about just having a conversation about a topic, and it's easy to hear the excitement and enthusiasm in their voices as you talk about things they have learned. Web and device based tools make it easy to make a podcast, and I'll likely be asking our kids to make more podcasts about things they're learning. Creating podcast as a digital artifact of learning is a a great way to construct and share knowledge.