Fifth Grade Washington, DC Podcast

The fifth grade students at our school take a yearly field trip to Washington, DC with their teachers. Some of the students are accompanied by one of their parents, while others are traveling alone under the wing and supervision of a friend’s parent. A few students per grade level do not go on the trip for reasons like health, finances, personality, etc.

This year, I thought of creating a Podcast Call-in Line for the students. I used the service of K7.net to get a phone number that would allow the students to use their parents’ cell phone to call and leave a voice message. That message is immediately attached (.wav format) and sent to a specified e-mail. I then import the attachments into Audacity to create a podcast episode.
Here is the letter of explanation that I sent to parents before the trip:

SJEDS WASHINGTON PODCAST

We are so excited about the Washington trip our 5th graders will be going on. In order to keep the students who are staying at home and also the parents who are not able to make the trip up to date and informed, we have created a special SJEDS Podcast Call in Line.

We are asking the parents who are chaperoning the trip to allow students to call

(insert the phone number you get from K7.net)

(Seattle number: Please check your cell phone contract if you have free nation wide calling) The voice message will be converted and sent as an attachment to my e-mail address. They will then be uploaded as podcast episodes. Podcast episodes will be posted on

http://sjeds.com/podcasts/index.htm
to be listened to directly from the website OR you can paste and copy this RSS

(http://sjeds.com/podcasts/episodes/RSS_feed.xml )

feed into your favorite podcatcher, such as iTunes. Click on the Advanced Tab and paste the RSS feed. iTunes will automatically subscribe you to SJEDS’Podcast. Then you are ready to download/sync them to your MP3 player.

We are looking to create an audio scrapbook from the trip. It would be great if we would have a variety of calls. What to say when calling in the Podcast Line?

• Let us know where you are.
• Describe your experiences in our nation’s capital.
• Give us a sound-seeing tour or a little history lesson about something you have learned.
• Interview a fellow classmate, a parent, a teacher or a tour guide.

A few rules to keep in mind for the safety with all Internet related activities:

1. Only mention your first name.
2. Do not mention a place and time you are going to be in the future. (Past is ok. Ex. We went yesterday afternoon to see the White House)
3. Do not talk about another person in any negative way.
4. Positive anecdotes about someone else are ONLY ok if you have permission from that person.
5. Students are responsible for their comments. The e-mail with the voice message has the phone number that it was sent from included!
6. Messages can only be up to 5 minutes in length.