Instructional Format

There is a wide spectrum of content in the Arkansas on iTunes U library. To inform your design process, explore these instructional approaches.

Spectrum of Instructional Approaches graphic.

You may already listen to podcasts like All Things Considered, Freakonomics Radio, or Grammar Girl. If so, you realize that we don’t always need video to convey ideas. An audio podcast can present interviews, lectures, discussions, and more. It can include music and sounds that help you tell your story.

Examples in iTunes:
Analyzing Pride and Prejudice
Roy's Writing Tools
Moneycast Economics
Spanish through Stories

Want to use visual elements to teach your content? You can start with pictures, then write a script to teach a lesson through a photostory or narrate an existing slideshow presentation in a conversational tone, maybe adding additional images or animation. Layer in some music, pay attention to the pacing of your slides or images, and you can create some powerful media.

Examples in iTunes:
Heart of the Ozarks
Transition Services
Literary Concepts Made Easy

If you’ve seen the Khan academy videos, you know how powerful it can be to show your problem solving tools and processes, as you draw, click, and show relationships between ideas.

Examples in iTunes:
Superman Jump
Khan Academy
Voicethread in the Classroom
Mathradical Journeys
5 Minute Spanish I

You may want to use classroom footage to provide insights on teaching and learning. By adding your own narration, highlighting key ideas with text, and editing the video to showcase only what you need, you can help viewers understand what to look for. You may also want to use this format to capture hands-on demonstrations like a student science project or to explore exciting locations.

Examples in iTunes:
CGI: The Kindergarten Files
Hot Springs National Park
Savvy Science
Down and Dirty Science

Want to use live video as part of your instructional approach and add a few other production elements? The sky is the limit in video production if you have the tools, time, and skills.

Examples in iTunes:
Spanish Vocabulary
Simple Machines
Skatepark Geometry

Designing Podcasts for Arkansas on iTunes U

Podcast production is a creative, challenging, and rewarding process. Basic instructional design principles apply: identifying your purpose and audience, targeting specific standards in a clear directed fashion, selecting appropriate content to meet your objectives...plus putting it all together with various technology tools.

Growing your skill set in these key areas of podcast production will help you become a successful contributor to iTunes U: Pre-Production Planning, Copyright Compliance, and Technical Production. Explore the resources below to support you along the way.

Pre-Production Planning

Determine your purpose and audience

Plan the essential question that each podcast will address and clearly state it.
Consider the wide audience beyond your classroom.
Target content standards.

Select the best format (audio or video)

Select and test your equipment.
Create conditions for audio and video quality.

Consider production elements

Establish consistent elements for your podcast (intro text, graphics, music.)
Consider use of narration, captions, sounds, live demonstrations, and other elements to make content more engaging and effective.

Plan carefully before recording

Determine instructional approach.
Write script or storyboard.
Get some feedback from peers.

Resources

Check out this 10-minute video on Pre-Production planning:
Topics include- storyboarding and production elements.

Copyright Compliance

As teachers and students, you may create and share videos and other creative work all the time, whether in face-to-face classroom settings, among peers, or in a private online network. Many of the things you do in these settings may NOT be allowable when you take it public.

if you are going to create multimedia projects like instructional videos that you will distribute through public sites like iTunes U, you must learn to follow basic guidelines to avoid copyright infringement. Learning about digital copyright is an important step in designing your podcasts.

There is much to learn about this subject, and a good place to start is the Podcasting Legal Guide, posted on the website. The document is easy to navigate and includes many examples that are specific to the work you are doing.

You may be able to find images or other work that is in the public domain. This includes older content that is no longer under copyright, and work published by the government. You can easily search for public domain images check out public domain information from the U.S. Government.

Resources

Common Sense Media Video: Credit for Creative Work--appropriate and inappropriate ways to use original online work for students.

Check out this 7-minute video on Copyright Compliance:

Technical Production

Producing a quality podcast is mostly about the content you are sharing and partly about its technical aspects. Ultimately you want your audience to learn and connect to the content of your production, and not be distracted by technical issues getting in the way of a positive viewing experience. If you have ever downloaded a video podcast or watched a streaming video on the web that was fuzzy, or in a format you could not watch, or audio you could not hear…then the technical side got in the way.

Software, hardware, compression and converting files, video resolution, aspect ratio, and understanding the technical language of video podcast production are the building blocks of keeping the technical side... on your side.

Resources

Technical Production-1: This 9-minute video focuses on software, hardware, working with files (formats, compressing and converting), and a case study.

Technical Production-2: This 11-minute video focuses on aspect ratio, resolution, and a case study.