As an English teacher, I am always trying to think of fun and innovative ways to engage my students and their creativity. Despite the final assessment for English being a written exam in Junior Cycle, there is also the Oral Communication CBA, which focusses on student’s oral skills. One way that I have found to be an engaging method to practise this is through the medium of Podcasts using the Microsoft Flip tool.
Majority of students today are familiar with the medium of Podcasts, and are always eager to engage with this assignment as it allows them the space to be creative with their spoken word! I typically introduce Flip to my students when we begin to study review writing. We originally write the book review as a written task, and then we will transform it into a podcast script.
Once our scripts have been drafted, edited, and re-drafted, we will then begin the move to transforming them into podcast scripts, which are also drafted and edited. Once ready, students are shown a demonstration on how Flip works, and are encouraged to play around with the Flip app to experiment on different actions that are available to them while they record their podcast.
Once this activity is complete, we then move on to interview style podcasts. The students are now well equipped on how to write a script, and how to create a dialogue between two people through the interview format. This then translates into them writing a podcast interview script on a topic they and society have an interest in. These will vary from issues close to home such as local news, but has also grown to be much bigger where students have delved into global issues such as climate change and war.
This activity has always proved to be very popular and students love the freedom that the Flip app gives them to make mistakes and edit their mistakes in the post-recording process. I would highly recommend trying Flip out in your classroom, or perhaps even recording your own podcast!