Podcast

A podcast is an audio program you can subscribe to online. Each time a new episode is posted, it will be delivered straight to your computer.

It's a neat tweak on RSS feeds. You can enclose files -- pictures, sound, movies -- in the feed, and route them straight into your media player. A number of people -- growing exponentially -- use this to distribute shows recorded to mp3, hence the name: new work is "cast" straight into your iPod.

And we, too, podcast. You get one or two new pieces a week. Enjoy your commute.

More on The School Scenes Project

As we were getting the most recent podcast ready to post, I emailed producer (and third grade teacher) David Green. I asked him about how the audio he posted was originally used, and what that project was like.

Regarding the project, I was inspired to do the School Scenes project by a site-specific audio tour I listened to at a performance art festival in Chicago about four years ago. The artist had a table set up in the lobby of the theater and was passing out portable CD players to people. You had to go to specific locations – the theater lobby, the mailbox at the corner of the street outside – while listening to certain tracks. The audio consisted of personal stories, reflections and questions to the listener. I loved the tour. It was simultaneously private and public, both a shared and individual experience: Standing in a crowded theater lobby, listening to a story which nobody else could hear, and then noticing somebody across the lobby with headphones on, listening too, but at a different point in the story than me. Or, sitting in the café listening to the recorded ambient sound of a café, while also hearing the actual noise of the café too.

Anyway, I often take experiences like this and think about how I might translate them to the world of eight and nine-year olds.

Over the course of the school year, the third graders wrote and recorded their school memory stories, each tied to a specific, physical location on campus.

For the premier, we had about seventy third-graders and parents gather at school, all with portable CD players or iPods. The program told them where to go and which track to listen to in a given location. After my introduction, everybody scattered to the seventeen different locations, spending about an hour taking their own route through the tour.

What I absolutely loved was that I could wander into the first grade classroom where there might be ten people, all silent, lost in their own headphone world, but all listening to exactly the same story, but not quite at the same time.

School Bus

This week it's School Bus from third grade teacher David Green, and third grader, Hannah. Check out the whole series of School Scenes.

Image by Christian et Cie.

Listen now: download, subscribe, review.

Finding a Room

This week we're going behind the scenes of the news story: it's Finding a Room from the World Vision Report and Will Everett.

Image by Erin Landry.

Listen now: download, subscribe, review.

Red Crystal Palace

This week, everyone's a fortune teller: it's a piece from the new series Red Crystal Palace, called Who Will Be the Next President?. Red Crystal Palace is produced by Fereshteh Toosi.

The Red Crystal Palace

Listen now: download, subscribe, review.

Secrets and Noise

You know how sometimes you hear something that gets you really excited about radio again? This is Secrets and Noise from Amy Conger.

Image by Laura.

Listen now: download, subscribe, review.

Ye Olde Photography

Ever want to just sell off all your possessions, leave all of modernity and travel across the country . . . in a horse and buggy . . . creating tintype photography . . . and camping in teepees? Yes? Yes? Yes? Yes?

Meet John Coffer.

Image copyright John Coffer 2001

From Salt graduate Megan Martin comes A 21st Century Pioneer Experience.

Listen now: download, subscribe, review.

Two Versions of a Story

In this podcast, we hear the production and workshop process from Curie Youth Radio. The piece is called "Letter to My Mom: You Haven't Lost Me", by Natalie Marquez.

Image by Anton Peck.

Hear the rough draft here, on the Generation PRX site, and the final draft on PRX here.

Listen now: download, subscribe, review.

Senior Poets

This week, it's Senior Poets from producer Catie Talarski.

Image by Catie Talarski

Listen now: download, subscribe, review.

Watching the Riot

This week it's Watching a Riot Through a Window by producer Zak Rosen. The story is told by Mike Mcbride: he originally wrote the piece in 1997 for the Detroit Sunday Journal.

Image by Katka.

Listen now: download, subscribe, review.

What a Fellowship!

This week it's What a Fellowship! from producer Judah Bruce Leblang. Enjoy it on your commute home for the long weekend.

Listen now: download, subscribe, review.

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