Jason Borgen's List: Podcasting

• We could read parts of books, to show why we like them. We could do interviews. If there's a field trip, we could make a recording of it and post it," said Mohamed El-Sayed, 10. "Kids anywhere will like to hear about us."

    

  Podcasting is just one of the interactive technologies, like blogging and handheld computers, being used to motivate students nationwide. It took off across the country last year, an offshoot of the surging popularity of iPods. A survey of 470 high-school students released this month by analysts with Piper Jaffray & Co. found that 61 percent of students had some kind of MP3 player, up from 40 percent in their spring survey.

• To make a podcast on the Revolutionary War, Sanborn had her students spend a couple of weeks researching their material in books and on the Internet before shaping it into a script. They were graded on the written script, but what really motivated them, Sanborn said, was the hope that their work would be chosen for the 8 �-minute podcast.

    

  For the time-travel feature, another performed as a town crier, condemning King George's tyranny. Sanborn was especially impressed with the way they came up with their own jokes on such topics as the Constitution.

    

  "You really have to understand the material to figure out a joke about it," she said.
• Podcasting, it turns out, is also well-suited for keeping busy parents in touch with the world their children inhabit all day at school. All they have to do is program their computers to capture the broadcasts — which could range from school announcements to plays to basketball games — and they can listen to them on their desktop computer or download them to a portable player.

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