A Take on Podcasting and Gender
Posted by Dinobrads at Podcasting-Education@yahoogroups.com:"In regards to videogaming and podcasting...... my reason for using podcasting has to do with girls lagging computer science skills, or lack of girls going into college computer engineering programs.
This is partly why the use of podcasting this year has been so exciting for me
professionally ......
One of my classes that I teach is called Girls Involved in Science and Engineering (GISE). The GISE "guys" take great delight in creating literary works that can be podcast. Coming up with a scientific, interesting, creative way to get people to listen to the science involved in their podcast is the most exciting part of the classroom period. Girls researching, creating and writing their podcasts......then producing and editing and finally posting it to iTunes. The girls are very involved in their own learning.
The reason that podcasting hooks so many girls is the reading and writing component. If you were to ask students in your classes, "How many of you play video games?" I
guarantee that almost every boy will raise his hand and none of the girls. Girls computer skills do not grow with videogaming activities, they grow with personal journals (MySpace, Blogs) and now with these podcasts.
I have done about 15 or so podcasts since Oct and it has been all girls. For my 8th grade science class I have a weekly "This Week in IPS" podcast- explaining the physical science completed for the week. I have a sign up sheet in the classroom and people are "fighting" to get their name up there to produce the next week show. I also now have a sheet where the the kids are creating and producing science fiction podcasts. This has really hooked the kids, they meet at lunch to develop these.
I am always looking for ways to foster science education and this has been a wonderful tool. The more we use this in our classrooms the more involved the students will be in the content that we are covering in our classrooms, or rather the students will be discovering in our classrooms."
posted by Michael @ 11:41 PM
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