Presented at the 2013 Council for Economic Education Conference in Baltimore, MD by Arch Grieve, History & Economics Teacher at

The Dayton Regional STEM SchoolSaturday, October 5 2013, 9-10am, Session H-21

Micro Meets Macro: Using Podcasts in the PBL Econ Classroom

About me

•From the Dayton Regional STEM School

•Teach History and Economics

•Drove from Ohio with my wife, Amanda. Tried to stop and see some sights but ran into some problems...

Format

Want to get through as much information as possible and explain the overarching goals behind the project, what I think it accomplishes, and how to do this in your own classroom.

•20 minutes- Overview of project

•25 minutes- Step-by-Step how to

•15 minutes- Questions/Discussion (please write down questions as you come to them unless they are short clarifying questions, as we may answer them during the presentation and I want to be sure to get through the entire presentation)

•I will have a link to my academia.edu account at the end where you can find all of the notes I present, rubrics, handouts, and materials

Part I

Project Overview

Learning Targets• Students learn about the local and global economy through this

project and how it impacts individuals' lives (state standard)

• National standards include: trade, specialization, markets and prices, competition and market structure, institutions, money, inflation, interest rates, and entrepreneurship

• Ohio Standards include: Government and the Economy: understanding how governmental actions impact the consumer and entrepreneur

• School I teach at really values project-based learning

• My standard: teaching students that incentives matter!

Inspiration•I'm a radio fan

•Wanted to have students make a product that was real, easily published, and would connect us to the community while incorporating real research

•Let's listen to a short excerpt from Olivia and Riddhi on the effect of NCR leaving Dayton in relation to local unemployment...

Student Directions

Rubric

Podcast Components

Essential questions• These are actually student-developed

• Students also develop their own hypothesis about what they expect to find in their interview

• Students read news articles and research economic data to come up with a question

• Only requirement is that they have to show the intersection between Micro and Macroeconomics (which I define somewhat loosely)

• What I'm trying to get students to understand is that economic statistics and governmental decisions are more than just boring news items, they have a real impact on their lives

• For example, a question could be "How might potential sequestration cuts at the national level impact the local economy through cuts in WPAFB contracts?"

Final product

•Students create podcasts using the Audacity program on their netbooks

•Students use Google Voice to record interviews and convert them to mp3 files

•Podcasts are then put onto a feed burner and uploaded to a class podcast page, available on iTunes

Partners• The STEM School has a lot of business partners

to draw upon

• This is a great way to get local businesses involved and have students ‘dig deeper’ into understanding how individuals and businesses make decisions when faced with tough choices

• Community support makes this much easier to accomplish, and there are ways you can go about seeking help (discussed later)

Implementation• Students spend roughly a week researching, preparing questions,

finding people to interview, and setting up times for interviews, then at least a week editing their podcasts and doing follow up research

• Students record their interview using Google Voice (usually) or in person through their netbooks (all students have their own netbooks, which makes this much easier)

• Students begin editing the podcast with the Audacity program to incorporate elements that enhance the listening appeal

• Had someone from WYSO (local NPR station) come in and discuss editing and making podcast appealing to listeners

• Students upload project to archive.org, send me the link, and I grade them and put them online using Blogger.com

Part II

How to do this!

Step by Step Process

• Any PBL project must be well-prepared, or it will fail

• Goal is to take you through the process I went through, much of which could be substituted with other software programs or recording devices. Still, this is how I’ve done it, and this is what I know works

Step 1-Figure out learning targets

• Project could be easily adapted to a wide range of learning targets and content areas, so make sure you are meeting your building and state requirements is the first step so students get out of it what you want them to get out of it

• I have included my learning targets at the beginning, which are aligned with my state requirements as well as the 5 Qualities we have as a school. I’ve also tried to align them with national standards.

Step 2-Find partners

I created a form using ‘Google Drive’ to send out to partners for help. I have a PDF of all of the steps I’m going through so you can see exactly how I did this and replicate it in your own classroom.

Step 3-Set up Hosting Services

I use blogspot.com (or blogger) through Google to host the links of the podcasts, which are archived on archive.org.

Students only do the first part of this process, and I have directions for how they are to upload their podcasts that are specific to their computers/the software program ‘Audacity’

Hosting Services/Programs• Audacity- Used to record podcasts

• Google Voice- Used to record interviews

• Archive.org- Used to host podcasts digitally

• Blogger.com- Used to publish podcasts in user-friendly manner & as a step in feedburning process

• Feedburner- Used to create a ‘Feed’ to publish podcasts through iTunes

• iTunes- For the end user

Audacity• This is the student end of the production processs

• You can use a lot of different types of programs to create podcasts

• Ideally would use Garageband, but not enough Macs or iPads

• Key is to get a final product in MP3 format to upload to iTunes. To do this, students must export using a program called LAME, and I have included steps for how to do this in the step-by-step instructions I give to students

Step 4- Recording• Had someone from NPR come and talk about recording

• I have attached her tips for the students in the PDF version, which you are free to share with your own students

• At this stage it is great if you can find someone from a local radio station to come in and talk about how to edit successfully to make the podcast sound professional

• Rubrics are important, and I’ve attached the step-by-step process I give my students so they know what to shoot for as their final product

• Make sure to have them listen to previous ones! I have them grade someone else’s podcast from a previous class so they know what is expected of them and that this is not an automatic A. Content is graded separately from production

Recording• I have students set up a Google Voice account for the interviews to

record them, which allows you to record interviews and export them as MP3s

• I show them how to record in class and take them through the steps

• Most important step is to enable call recording!

• During the call, they can simply press ‘4’ once they have interviewee on the phone and it will record the conversation

• Students only have to give the interviewee their Google Voice number, and I allow them to coordinate this with the interviewee. They can link them to a cell phone or use my own Google Voice account in a pinch (and my own phone) and I can send them the file, although I prefer that they figure out how to do this

• This is where the contact form comes in handy, as they know how to get in touch with the interviewees and can arrange a time beforehand

Step 5- Uploading• Important: Make sure students understand the process for uploading podcasts

• Instructions for a step-by-step you can give them have been included as a word document so you can personalize. They are specific to archive.org

• You must create an archive.org account, and it will be necessary to give students the password for this

• I created a gmail account (drssworldhistory@gmail.com) that I use for many projects where they upload to archive.org and I use for nothing else

• After creating it, set up an account at archive.org and make a simple password, then personalize the student instructions for yourself to give to students so they can upload their podcasts when they are finished. Makes it much easier for you to manage than uploading them all themselves

• Create a way for students to send you their links when finished. I use a Google Form through Google Drive, give them the link to the form, and they input their names and the URL to their podcasts, which timestamps them so I can check they are submitted on time

Step 6- Getting a blogger account

• Next you have to set up an account on Blogger.com, a Google service

• Once completed, you can make a ‘Post’ for each students podcast

• Inside the post I have the students create a description of their podcast, which become the ‘show notes’ for their podcast when it shows up on iTunes (if you set up this feature on Feedburner)

• Within the post, include a link (I usually link the word ‘podcast’ or the title of the podcast, if it appears in the post) to the podcast they uploaded to archive.org

• Once you set up the feedburner this link will automatically be discovered by the feedburner and within a day or two it will appear in iTunes, depending on how fast it moves

• *This is where most of the problems arise, so if there is a specific issue you are dealing with there is usually a forum you can find by googling your specific issue to help you pinpoint the issue

This links to archive.org podcast URL

Step 7- Feedburners• Feedburner.com allows you to publish your podcast. It essentially

takes your content and makes it into a format people want to read (or listen to, in the case of podcasts)

• You can set up Feedburner to take your content from a specific blogger account

• Good instructions for how to do this can be found here: https://support.google.com/feedburner/answer/78465?hl=en and have been included as a PDF in the documents supplied.

• There are specific instructions you can follow if you intend to link this to iTunes, our last step, which will make your podcast more marketable (like adding an ability for people to read your notes and including a picture, which you can create, which will show up when people look at it on iTunes)

• Apple also has a good link on many troubleshooting topics for podcasts found here: http://www.apple.com/itunes/podcasts/specs.html (also PDF)

Step 8- Submit to iTunes• The last step is submitting to iTunes for approval, which usually takes

under a week. You can submit to other services, but this is the only one I target.

• Directions for submission include logging into iTunes on your computer, so you need to have the program installed before submitting and then follow their steps, including going through the iTunes store.

• Steps can be found here: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1819 (also a PDF)

• From here, people can either discover your podcast through iTunes, or you can also advertise through the local paper, a letter home to parents, school Facebook page, or more. Depends on how much you want to get the word out!

Step 9- Make Public• Our school has a website and a presence on social media, so I have

used see to get the word out

• Making the work public tends to take the student work to the next level, as students realize that anyone will be able to go onto iTunes and hear what they have done and that we are advertising this to the community

• Also is good for your school, as community members like to hear these kinds of stories! The kids are actually doing some valuable reporting in many of these podcasts!

Step 10- Reflection

• I would like to figure out ways to enhance the rigor of the research involved, as currently students are required to find a statistic about the macro economy that they can "put a face to" through their interview. This is not always from a governmental source, like the Bureau of Labor Statistics, but I would like ideas on how to ensure the material they use is both rigorous and accessible

• Was able to incorporate feedback from a project protocol at my school on ideas surrounding how to streamline partner involvement and make it easier to connect students to our partners

• Also opportunities here to incorporate cross-curricular units

Questions• At this point I will not be offended if some of you

leave while I answer questions... If I weren't presenting I would be out in the lobby getting coffee before the next presentation!

• I know this is a lot of information, so please ask me about the steps that you would like me to clarify or things you'd like to know more about

• I have all of my materials used for this project (rubric, student instructions, this presentation, etc.) on academia.edu. Search for "Arch Grieve" or take a business card with the link on it: http://www.academia.edu/4478316/Presentation_on_Local_Economics_Podcast_Project_to_Council_for_Economic_Education

• If you don't get a card, just email me and I will send you the presentation: arch.grieve@wright.edu

Or click here!