Last week I had the chance to work with our sixth grade history students on creating commercial recordings. They were doing research on 20th century inventions such as airplanes, washer machines, bubble gum and even kool aid! Their teacher had already designed a lesson where the students research their invention and create a poster with the research information included. She mentioned to me that she wanted to "jazz up" the lesson a bit and the first thing I thought of was a podcast. We decided to have the students work in pairs instead and then in addition to the poster, have them record a commercial persuading others to buy the invention and which would showcase their poster.
While completing research the students filled out a worksheet with the following elements:
- Name of the invention
- Name of the inventor
- Date invention was created
- Impact invention had on society
- Any other important information
The teacher and I quickly created a sample commercial for the kids on the Transcontinental Railroad. We had to substitute a train's horn for a ship's fog horn, but we explained to the students that they may also have to think creatively with their sounds effects. You could see them start to think about they could supercharge their recordings.
After two days in the library and using computers for research and to print out pictures of their inventions, the students started on their commercial scripts, which also had to include the above information. Once the script was approved, students were allowed to begin recording their commercials. We used the program Garageband on our macbooks and set up an enhanced audio podcast and the students learned how to record voices, which tracks to record on, and how to add music and sound effects. We allowed the students about 20-30 minutes for this process. Luckily, we had the additional help of another TRT to help us. As students were recording, others were working on their posters. After the students finished recording, we added pictures of their posters to the podcast track as featured album art. By creating the enhanced podcast, this allowed us to show their posters and hear their commercial at the same time. On the afternoon of their second day of recording, we took the commercials, turned them into m4a files and then created a website on iweb for all three classes commercials.
Did I mention this was my first time using Garageband? I'm thrilled with the results and the sound quality of the recordings. I will be using Garageband again soon!
What do think of our commercials? Have any ideas for how you could use Garageband in your classroom?
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