One of the things I am passionate about is finding ways to use podcasting in Education.   I am an English teacher at Penn Manor High School, Millersville, PA and have incorporated podcasting into my classroom to highlight student work, to reinforce lessons, to conduct student book reviews, and to share and teach poetry.

The Room 312 Podcast

This podcast focuses on conveying mini-lessons and reinforcing what I am teaching in the classroom.  (Yes, I do teach in room 312 at Penn Manor.)  Topics range from literature concepts to grammatical points, essay writing tips down to interactive lessons.  At the end of some of the earlier podcasts, you find some of the earliest book reviews.  These eventually became The Fireside Book Chat.

The Fireside Book Chat

Originally, these book chats started out as unrecorded conversations I was having with my students about books they chose from the library, read on their own, and had finished.  They eventually became a segment of my Room 312 podcast called the “Fireside Book Chat.”  These students, many of them my lowest level readers, loved the idea of sitting behind the microphone and recording their book talks with me.   It became kind of a competition between them to see whose book review  could generate the most downloads.  Eventually, I decided that the book chats mixed in with my mini-lessons made Room 312 feel cluttered, so I moved the book talks to their own channel: The Fireside Book Chat.

Poem of the Week

Scott shares a weekly poem, exploring the way he encounters the world.