Video Podcasts Free Up Class Time
Tuesday, July 8, 2008 at 9:11AM Woodland Park High School in Colorado is using video podcasts to remove lecture from class. Viewing podcasts made by teachers is given as homework so teachers and students can focus on hands-on activities and direct problem solving during class time. For students without Internet, they can copy episodes to a flash drive. Those without computers can take home DVDs to play on their televisions.
Jonathan Bergmann and Aaron Sams are the chemistry teachers involved in the video podcasting. In an article in the Pike Peak Courier View, they note an advantage is that students can pause and rewind a lecture when they don't understand concepts. The teachers take turns making episodes, so the students have the benefit of having two instructors. The teachers recommend SnapKast (Windows) or ProfCast (Macintosh) for recording lectures with PowerPoint or Keynote slides.
Click to go to the Woodland Park podcasts. Additionally, Jonathan and Aaron have an excellent video where they talk about their vodcasting. As an aside, I try to avoid educational and technology jargon. I do not use the term vodcast as I prefer video podcast.
podcasting 
Reader Comments (8)
Hey Tony
I think I found a link for these podcasts.
http://www.wpsdk12.org/~jbergmann/Podcasts
Have a good one.
Thanks Dale! I updated the post with the link.
I am so eager to use podcasts in my class! I know it will open up so much opportunity for learning and sharing! Thanks for all you do...you truly are a wealth of knowledge!
Cool...I've been doing this for several years for college chem. My students call it TiVo for the professor....
Thanks for the great resource - I found it looking for help linking from the web to iTunes and found quite a lot more going on.
Thank you!
Jonathan Bergmann here. Tony: thanks for the kind words. You might also want to note that aaron and I have made a web page where we explain some of the logistics and how we do what we do. The web page is: http://educationalvodcasting.com. Note: we have had problems with our web page (we are not web developers) and all of our navigation buttons only work with firefox. If there are any web guys out there maybe you could help.
You can also find our videos on google videos and we are even selling our video podcasts at the web page: http://chempodcasts.com.
Good point on the terminology: video podcasts seems to say what we are doing a bit better. Ther term vodcasts has caused some confusion amongst some folks.
We did a 3 day conference this summer with teachers from around the country (about 25 of them). And that was a great time helping teachers learn the method. We will be seeing more and more of this kind of delivery in the future.
If you want to dialogue some more, aaron and I would be glad to discuss things more.
We are the makers of the SnapKast software that Mr. Bergmann and Mr. Sams are using. We see great results with technology and innovative teaching methods. This only works with talented, well trained teachers. Their work is absolutely awesome. We invite you to visit our website to see actual samples and use cases.
SnapKast was designed by educators for educators!
http://snapkast.com
We are always eager to collaborate with teachers to help you get started with SnapKast with your students. Working with Jonathan and Aaron has been a joy.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Great idea. I don't tape lectures or my delivery of content this way, but I may just have to try it. I use screen casts to review processes students are learning though. I wonder what happens when students don't view the lecture? Or does the classroom have a culture of doing and viewing outside of the walls that it soon takes over? I'm also wondering what percentage of the content is delivered via lecture? Just curious.