Update for Students: You were overwhelmingly in favor of spending time on this podcast challenge, so it has been folded into all classes. Formal assignments have been added to Google Classroom. You will not be required to produce a complete podcast, nor will you have to enter the contest. Instead, you will have three required assignments: to analyze example podcasts, to gather potential ideas, and to answer six questions about one of those ideas. All of the surrounding information from NPR is critical, of course (click this link for an example), but you will be working more explicitly through the following:
- Starting Your Podcast: Listening to Examples
- Getting Your Ideas Together
- Beyond the 5 W’s: What Should You Ask Before Starting a Story?
The current deadline for all this is January 25. Let’s revisit that deadline on a class-by-class basis next week.
The Challenge
We’re a makerspace, which means we make things. Sometimes, those artifacts are inspired by people and organizations outside of our walls. Case in point:
This podcast challenge is a ready-made makerspace unit. It requires you to analyze existing podcasts to figure out how to emulate them. It requires all of our universal skills and traits. In fact, if you look through the student resources NPR has provided, you’ll see a mention of a “toolbox” in the first step:
That’s not just a tremendous example of how those universal skills and traits work in the real world; it’s also remarkably similar to a 20 Time or Pareto Project.
The Calendar
Speaking of your Pareto Projects, this is timed well for us. Look at the calendar for the year:
As I write this, we are in between Pareto Projects. February 25 is set aside as the start of the next process. NPR’s podcast challenge ends on March 31. That overlap gives us a unique opportunity:
- We work on the podcast challenge once a week or so through the February break.
- In Q3B, which runs from February 25 through March 15, you continue the podcast challenge or begin a new Pareto Project.
- If you continue the podcast, you will finish and submit it by Friday, March 29.
- In that case, you would begin a smaller Pareto Project on Monday, April 1.
Projects are meant to be presented from May 28 through June 14, which is the last Friday we meet together. There is, therefore, more than enough time for you to create a podcast and a second, meaningful Pareto Project.
Let’s start with your feedback: What do you think of this podcast challenge? After looking at NPR’s website, are you inspired by the possibilities? How do you think this would fit our space? Talk to me in the comments, where your peers can benefit from the exchange.