Writing Podcasts is not necessarily easy, but I believe the opportunities they provide for helping students develop authentic audience-based compositions makes them worth it. I'm learning, though, that teaching through podcasts will take several tries before I have a strong sense of the potential pitfalls and of how best to configure asssignments and guide students as they work.

My initial foray into using podcasts in a first year writing class brought some interesting results. The strongest characterstic of the assignment, I would say was the motivation factor it added to the literary scholarship undertaken by students. The podcast format galvanized group work and engaged students with the research and explication of poetry that was the goal of the task. The results are striking in that the class activities for the unit developed into some of those instances where the energy of the podcast project clearly courses through the class and the instructor can easily step back, toward the edge of the picture and watch while the learning and the writing play out.

Here are archived postings of the podcasts from the literary explication assignment:

Poetry by the Fireside, A discussion of William
Carlos Williams's "As the Cat"

All Poems Considered, An exploration of
William Carlos Williams and his poetry

The Fruitbasket, A Discussion of William Carlos
Williams's "This is Just to Say"

The Compton Morning News, A Discussion of Gwendolyn
Brooks's "We Real Cool"

We Get Lit, An Exploration of Ron Wallace's "Hardware"