Charlotte High School Speech Class Receives National Recognition
It’s been a few months since our CHS spring speech class “signed off” as the course ended, but the excitement for putting your voice out there for a larger audience has increased. School started in September with students stopping by my classroom to let me know they were signing up for speech class this year. I’ll be teaching two sections of speech this school year beginning in mid-January. Speech students from last spring have also stopped by to let me know that they are still reading this blog for comments too. Other students have emailed from college to recall the URL to share our podcasts with their new friends at school. In addition, my student’s work has been highlighted in some national venues.
Here is the summary of the project:
Charlotte High School’s spring 2007 speech class created its own “This I Believe” podcast series on this blog. Students in grades 9 through 12 wrote “This I Believe” essays following the format of the National Public Radio “This I Believe” broadcast (http://thisibelieve.org/) and then recorded their essays to create a podcast (an audio file distributed over the Internet) about their beliefs. They also welcomed comments about their speeches through the comment feature.
This is what’s been happening since we wrapped up the project:
Recently this work has recently been highlighted on the National Public Radio’s “This I Believe” website in the educator database noting how teachers are using “This I Believe” in the classroom. Visit
http://thisibelieve.org/dsp_ShowEODetail.php?city=Charlotte&state=MI&uid=179&start=0 to view the class information.
I was invited to be a co-host, with Troy Hicks, of the webcast Teachers Teaching Teachers, a weekly webcast on the EdTechTalk channel of the WorldBridges network this past May. We spoke about “Re-mediating Speech Class” and you can access the podcast of the show at http://teachersteachingteachers.org/?p=117 .
As part of this podcasting project, Troy Hicks, an assistant professor of English at Central Michigan University and a Co-Director for the Red Cedar Writing Project and I collaborated on teacher research gathering student perceptions of podcasting in the classroom. This work has resulted in the Language Arts Journal of Michigan publishing “Keepin’ it Real: Multiliteracies in the English Classroom” an article that we co-authored. The focus of this article is on the role of multiliteracies, including technology integration, as a means for authentic audiences and purposes for assignments.
Just a few weeks ago, I the National Council of Teachers of English Annual Conference in a panel presentation on “Technology Toolkit Roadshow: Using the Write Tools,” showcasing Charlotte students in my presentation titled “From the Front of the Classroom to the Ears of the World: Blogging and Podcasting in Speech Class.”
Also, forthcoming in 2008, Troy Hicks and I will publish a chapter on “Podcasting as an Extension of Speech Class” in the National Writing Project sponsored book Technology and Change: Teaching Practice in the Writing Classroom.
Congratulations to Charlotte High School students for their stellar work in this exciting project. Our community has many reasons to be proud of the efforts of these students.
For our wonderful audience, we’ll be adding more to our Digital Voices site from speech students around March 2008. I hope you’ll check out some of my English student’s work.
My freshman English classes are sharing some of their work through podcasts and a few vodcasts at http://english9reed.edublogs.org/ and we’ll be adding more content soon.
Junior English used a wiki this year to show the connections between poets. You can check out their work at http://english11poets.pbwiki.com/.
We’d love to hear what you think of the ways we’re taking our learning beyond the walls of the classroom.
Thank you for being our audience.
Mrs. Dawn Reed
