A Student Podcast Contest

For the second year in a row NPR is a hosting a podcasting competition for students in fifth through twelfth grade. To enter the challenge students have to create a podcast that is three to twelve minutes long. Unlike last year, this year students can include music in their podcasts. Any music that is included in a podcast has to be a student's original work.

NPR's Student Podcast Challenge is open for submissions now and will stay open until March 24th. The winning submissions will be played on NPR broadcasts. Submissions to the contest have to be made by teachers on behalf of students. Submissions have to be uploaded to SoundCloud. Submissions have to be original work created specifically for the contest. All of the contest rules are available here.

Applications for Education
For this contest NPR has published two extensive podcasting guides. The guide for students walks them through the planning and recording processes. Although they don't provide tutorials on specific tools, they do offer this video about training your voice to sound more natural on a microphone.

H/T to Larry Ferlazzo.

StoryCorps Videos

StoryCorps is a nonprofit organization that records and gathers the stories of Americans from all walks of life. The stories range from light-hearted feel-good stories to serious and sometimes sad stories. Many of the stories are played on National Public Radio. Today, through my colleague Abbie Morrison (check out her great photography blog) I learned that StoryCorps has turned some of the stories into short, animated videos. So far there are five videos available that you can view on the StoryCorps site or view on Vimeo.

The video below features Studs Terkel talking about what has been lost in modern life and his vision of the future.

The Human Voice from StoryCorps on Vimeo.

Applications for Education

The StoryCorps animated videos are a great example of the power of storytelling. The videos and the audio recordings of StoryCorps are a resource through which students can hear varying perspectives on the world we live in. Use the video above to talk with students about what is gained or lost when automation replaces humans.