Podcast Assignment.

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While making my podcast I really had a wonderful time thinking about the assignment that I would want my students to do and pushing it forward to them in a unique way such as a podcast. This really got me thinking about how if I'm having so much fun with this educational tool than my students could have just as much fun. As I've mentioned countless times, having fun is one of the key ingredients to getting students engaged and involved in their education. I also really loved the idea that the video gave about giving feedback to students through podcasts. Every student becomes disheartened when they receive a graded paper that has more red ink on it than their own handwriting. By giving feedback through podcasts students don't need to see that discouraging sign. It makes a student feel as if the teacher is constructively giving a personalized critique of everything that they had written. The red ink can sometimes feel like an unfair attack by the teacher.
For this assignment I asked my students to do quite a few things. First, I asked them to choose a poem that they enjoyed. This poem could come from any poetry book or website that they choose. The next step is for them to read the poem extremely carefully and note the poetic devices that the author uses such as metaphor, simile, personification, allusion, etc. and speak about how effectively (or ineffectively) they though the author used them. This is where I want the students to give me an overall impression of the piece.
The next step is research based. I want the students to research the author and the time period during which the author lived. This should raise some interesting questions for the students. How are the poems a product of their time period? How did the poet's life affect the way he or she wrote? How did the other author's of the time period or from times before influence the author? Was the author part of a major poetry movement? If so, who were the other important authors of the time? How are the authors different from their chosen author? How are they the same? I give the students a lot of freedom to choose what kinds of issue he or she would like to explore when it comes to their poems. I feel like when a little bit of freedom is given to the students they become mush more involved in their research and writing because they enjoy it so much more.
The next part of this assignment is technology based. The students are asked to create a podcast in which they will be reading the poem that they have chosen for the first part or a poem that they have written themselves. If the student chooses to use the poem from the first part then the reading should be followed by their impressions of the poem and whether the poem was effective or not in their eyes. I have also urged students to have fun with this and perhaps read the poem in the style of the poem's author. If the student chooses to do a poem of their own then I have urged them to follow up the reading with a short response about what inspired them to write the poem. Who are some of their poetic influences? How did the student make decisions about rhyme, metaphor, simile, etc? As I said before this assignment is meant to blend poetry knowledge, research skills, and technological skills together to create a fun and interesting project that I believe the students will get a lot from.