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http://i.cnn.net/cnn/services/podcasting/images/image.pod.gif

Types of student podcasting

I have a non-pointed form of grading. Some have suggested that I do a form of contract grading. I don't know what to call it, but there is a certain body of work that students must do at an acceptable level to earn a C for the semester. To get a B, students must do all of the C work, plus some additional stuff. Students pursuing an A have to do the C and B work plus more.

This semester, I decided to have all students start with audio podcasts. After a few weeks, I was going to have the A & B students graduate to enhanced podcasts. And then, I was going to have the A students move up to video podcasts. So, according to this plan, the C's would be doing audio, B's enhanced and A's video. We have Garage Band on our class computers so I was able to show students how to create enhanced podcasts (audio plus still images). However, many students want the ability to do their work outside of class and I didn't find any Windows equivalent of Garage Band that they could use to easily create an enhanced podcast (but I didn't really look very hard).

So, it turns out that it is actually easier for most students to create video podcasts using Windows Movie Maker than it was to hang around and use our machines. In fact, some students that continued to use our machines found it easier to use iMovie to create a video podcast than it was to use Garage Band to create enhanced ones. I'm now down to 2 podcast formats... what do I do about A's, B's and C's?

BTW, Windows Movie Maker doesn't naturally save in a videopodcast format (I wonder why?), but a student turned me on to a site that de-babelizes document formats. It's awesome! http://media-convert.com/

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