Podcasts are a great way for students to learn. They require planning, research, teamwork and can be done on almost any topic. Podcast also give students a sense of worth knowing that others will be listening to their work. I have created podcasts with students as young as fourth grade but I know they can be successful in younger grades as well.
This document will help you the teacher, learn everything you need to know to engage your students in creating their very own podcast. It is a great thing to share at parent teacher conferences or even on your website.
Included with this document: a teacher created PowerPoint to help students understand the steps and tricks in creating good Podcasts, a podcast formatting handout which will aid students in the writing of the Podcasts, pictures of the setup and export within Garageband.
I developed this podcast to have students cover a current event in social studies, but you could easily change the topic to anything that you would like. Some examples: book reviews, explaining a reaction in science, description life in a certain time period in history, you could event let the students choose... the sky is truly the limit!