Hey, everybody. My name is Jim Hague and this is the video that I presented at the Educating for Careers over in Sacramento just a couple of weeks ago. So much fun. And I want to thank everybody who showed up. Here is my video for those of you who did not show up or did not participate in the Zoom call.
So who am I? Well, let me tell you a thing about myself. First of all, podcasting and the student voice. It was an amazing journey for me to be able to create something like this, a program like this for my students. I am using Google Slides, so I’ll do my best to kind of, use this.
First of all, there is a QR code right there. So if you want to point your phones to the monitor you’ll get my information there and you can contact me at any time. But let me tell you right now, podcasting is the greatest thing I’ve ever done as a teacher. And I’m not kidding. And I’ve been teaching for, close to about ten years now, and I’m.
I teach a lot of really cool things, digital media arts, you know, the graphics and the video. But podcasting is the greatest thing I’ve ever done. As a teacher. And it just was such an amazing, such an amazing, journey for myself and my students. And I like to share everything with you, by the way, I’m here not to promote anybody.
I’m just sharing what worked for me. Hopefully, if you’re open to this, it’ll work for you as well. So a little bit about myself. I work for the San Gabriel Valley Rocky, and I’m stationed at Gladstone High School, which is a part of the Azusa Unified School district. Before that, I’m able to have 25 really cool years having my own business.
I founded my own company, I had employees and we designed websites, we did graphics, we did video. Pretty much everything that I’m teaching right now to the right side over here, you can see that, you know, you can basically this is my contact information. That’s my school email. That’s my email. Whatever you need. just let me know and I will try to get back to you.
And by the way, I have a QR code, and just in most slides, just in case, you know, people who came in late or if you’re watching this a little bit, and anyway, so, of course that won’t be a problem with the video here. Okay, let’s go on to the next one. So hear a little bit more about me.
I am the lead teacher of the Digital Media Arts Academy. I’m also a Citrus College adjunct professor, and these are the things that I teach. I teach mostly digital media arts, focusing on the Adobe Creative Cloud of software, specifically Photoshop, Dreamweaver, and Adobe Premiere for graphics, web and video, respectively. For Citrus College, I teach a web design course, and, one notable thing on my behalf is that for the year 2021, I was voted as Skills USA National Advisor of the Year.
That was pretty exciting and pretty darn cool, I’d say. So here we are. let me talk to you about my program. before we lead into podcasting. So you look at the school right now, okay? I mean, you look at this classroom. This is my classroom. I’m pretty proud of it. I’ve got about 36 Imax. I’ve got, to try to keep a clean room.
I don’t have much on the walls, trying to mimic as much of a studio. So when I teach, lighting goes down, you know, the atmosphere is adjusted so that people can, you know, get the best artwork possible. And so. But nothing out of the ordinary. I mean, there are millions of teachers like me that teach the same thing, and there are millions of teachers like me that, you know, they have the same kind of classroom.
So what makes me so different? Well, let me first start with what motivated me about podcasting. So I had a principal named Mr. Fernandez. Okay? He was a Gladstone High School principal, and eventually he’ll become the Azusa High School principal. And so he decided that his teacher should learn the concept of project-based learning or work-based learning, which is to try to mimic the real-world scenario inside the classroom.
Writing proposals, getting an LLC, teaming up with people, trying to win bids, trying to win jobs, and of course, executing and, you know, carrying on, delivering the goods. Well, I was perfect for this one because I was a business owner. I know exactly what he’s talking about. And so I implemented that in the classroom. And he, Mr. Fernandez encouraged us to study what the special school called high-tech high School in San Diego.
And I listen to their seminars. They held a seminar and I want to thank them for that. So this is all about project based-learning. You take ownership of your project, you improve your creativity. You collaborate with other students, and of course, you promote critical thinking. And those three gentlemen are the ones that I kind of collaborate with, with them the most.
We came up with the concept of podcasting, and it was really cool because we all had students who turned in some podcasts. My students did amazing. And of course, we want it. At least I want it to include AR, and integrate podcasting as a part of my program. I thought it was a great idea. And why not?
I mean, I can go ahead and teach video production. Why not teach audio production? So I went to the next gentleman by the name of Mr. Frank Chang, who’s a director of College and Career Pathways. This is the man who makes our dreams come true. He makes students’ dreams come true. He helps students get to the next level.
We got an SSP loan. I’m sorry, SSP grant. Not alone. No, no, we don’t want that. An SSP grant, and we utilize that to get some equipment specific for podcasts. And this is what we have now. This is the other side. You saw this side right here okay. This is one side of the classroom. This is the other side of the classroom where we have a nice news desk.
There you see a couple of students. And way over here you’ll notice that, there is a booth. It’s a ten by ten, sound booth. But I just wanted to show you this because, again, getting the right budget, getting the right support from administration and district is so critically important. And, of course, what I’m trying to say is, as digital media arts as CTE teachers or of anybody else, we got to think outside of the box.
We got to use our imagination. And of course, you see my students over here, they’re kind of preparing for podcasting. Let’s zoom in. And there it is right there. Isn’t that a work of art? So you may want to stop this video to kind of, look at the information that I have over here. This is called the Whisper Room.
Okay. There’s a phone number. There’s an address of the person that I contacted. I don’t know if this is still present or if it’s accurate now, but you can call the phone number. And, of course, you can go to whisper room.com and, well, talk to somebody and you’ll notice that there’s a lot of different booths out there.
We happened to get one of the more expensive ones. This is about $18,000. And I know that’s a lot of money for schools, but it was money worth spending. It was an investment. And already I’m telling you, the returns have been astronomical. It’s just been phenomenal and eye opening. But, this is what we have and this is what we created.
So, but don’t worry, I’m going to cover podcasting. So you can take into consideration all different types of budgets, all different alternatives that we have out there. All right. So again, in this next section I’m going to talk about introducing podcasting okay. And we’ll hear some testimonials from students in, in, and in a second here.
But again you got to have the vision. You got to have the support. And of course you need to introduce it to the students. So here I’ve got two of my young ladies and let’s hear what they have to say. Okay. Sorry. Here we go.
STUDENTS
How do we work within the same seminar? So it’s the whispering. It’s going through. But you, like, you just like. Hey, guys. Hey, so this is that podcasting microphone. We can adjust this however you like. This is where you transfer your audio to your computer to where you can upload your files and edit later on. And behind this you have a green screen.
And over here there is lighting. And then this right here is basically the phone. And it keeps the noise from leaving this room. And yeah. So what can we do in the West room? They can do pretty much anything. Anything to do with the voice. So it’s not just podcasting. It’s also voiceover work. It’s also books, audio speeches, lectures.
STUDENTS
We’re working on the remake of the alien invasion. Remember, our Orson Welles, The War of the worlds, back in the 50s, where he’d had a nice little radio play about aliens, taking over the world and that cause they’re ready to go nuts back then. Well, we’re going to remake that student version, so stay tuned for that one.
All right, so we’re going to the next one. And this is AirPods. Let’s watch this video right here as well. Carson has its very own community. podcasters log into guest books.com. And here’s some of your peers speaking their minds.
When there’s notches or when I was years old. When I started this channel. Oh, you don’t. Hello guys. This is the The Diversify Our Narrative podcast. And this is Hector Hernandez. Hello. My name is Sean and I’m here with my three best friends, Julianna, Kimberly and Grace. Hello. My name is RJ. Hello. My name is Santiago. And this is the box.
STUDENTS
The box.
Right. And there you have it. That is the box. So, a lot of my students are podcasting. And let me go ahead and show you if I could. I’ll bring this down within the viewable area so we can go to guest pods.com. And as soon as it pops up, I will adjust the screen. There we have it.
MR HAGUE
As you can see I’ve got a lot of podcasting happening. and also some video casting happening. And the video is actually a podcast with a video. Or you can see it the reverse. It’s actually a video just for the end, you know, without the, that it can be separated into a podcast.
So at any rate, I welcome you to go take a look at it. Tell me what you think. Okay. And of course, you heard a few things. first of all, you probably heard, a Hispanic, young lady who is, exceptional student. And I wanted to kind of promote our cultures. And so hopefully one day I’ll have French.
Hopefully one day I’ll have Arabic. Hopefully one day I’ll have, you know, every kind of, every kind of student that we have. And I think it’s really important to go ahead and promote that. So. All right. So now what does it mean to the student? This is where the money shot is okay. So what does it mean to me of course is innovative and makes me into a cool teacher I guess.
But I’m not in it to be cool. I’m in it for the students. And of course, let’s go ahead and listen to two of my buddies over here. There you go. Hello, I am darling. Hi, I’m Matt. Hello, I’m Elena. Hi, I’m Divya and we are a quadruple chaos podcast. What is it? Oh, okay. This is where the chaos comes from.
In our name. podcasting here for JJ and spuds. Okay. Very happy. Join us. It’s very hectic. It is very hectic. Chaos. It’s in our name but it’s pretty entertaining. Podcast. At the beginning it was funny arguments but now it’s just doing funny things. Just entertaining, just being ourselves into a camera, like having our own conversations.
We’ll bring up topics, whatever we find interesting, and then we could bring up an argument. And that’s why we’re in Quadruple Chaos. There’s a lot of chaos happening, as you saw a few seconds ago. Yeah, but the joy that I have to be in here, it’s so exciting. I love being in here, like, boost my mood if I’m having a bad day, like, oh, I have a podcast mood instantly boosted.
Like, it means so much to me to be here with my friends. I, you know, my name is Jimmy Sumlin. I’m a senior in high school. Right now I’m working on a podcast about sports and entertainment. Right now it’s mainly sports, working on entertainment. But I’m very glad to do. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity I’m taking.
I’m actually. Hello. My name is Priscilla, and we’re in our second year of podcasting. As high school students, my co-host and I have had an undeniable great time sharing our perspectives in the community and around the world. We’ve been able to address social issues along with modern day society problems, and have also been able to investigate topics that are still undiscovered.
Podcasting has allowed us to advocate and discuss items of ourselves and others. Our goal with podcasting has been to entertain and give perspective to those willing to tune in. Hey, it’s Mister Smiley, co-host of the GMC podcast, and Johnny Gargano or Johnny the Gentle here. We just finished wrapping up the first episode of our podcast, and I gotta say, it’s so it feels really good.
It’s good. It’s getting the talk and getting to talk about whatever. Yeah, just getting it. Yeah. Next week we’ll be covering good games. Yeah. Maybe if we got into the game, we would have a lot planned. We have game reviews, we got reviews. All kinds of stuff showing up in the water. Yeah. it’s this first episode is really fun to me.
And I hope we can do more and see you guys next year. There is some stuff. I’ve had nothing but a fun and positive experience with podcasting. Me and my co-host enjoy sharing our personal stories and opinions with our audience, while also educating them with real world news. Having guests on has only heightened the experience as we were able to share their stories one way or another.
We’re always left crying with left fun and also learned something. All right, so of course, those are my students. And it has, I mean, there’s a lot of students interested in podcasting. And you know, what really is amazing is that, this is this, you know, the stuff they tell me and the feedback that I get, let’s look at some of the courses I have heard.
Even though I talk, I feel as if I’m being heard. I have such a sense of freedom like no other. I didn’t know that I had it in me. I have always had it in. For me, podcasting is enlightening. It’s uplifting. It’s about wellness. It’s therapeutic. It’s meaningful. And of course, the most important thing for me as a teacher is that it’s engaging.
And we got so many students that just love coming in here, and I’ve never seen anything quite like it. You gotta remember, we just went through a pandemic. These kids, their world changed, and I really still feel sorry for the graduating class of 2020. A lot of their stuff has been taken away from their dances get togethers.
So to be able to allow the students to express themselves with their peers, there’s no teachers inside the whisper room. There’s no, other people inside the whisper room is just them and the mics, and that’s it. What they say? Well, let’s just say one thing, okay? We’re we’re going to talk about how to control content, but I let them speak whatever they want, whatever it is on their minds.
Okay. So of course it’s up to me to decide what gets published and what doesn’t get published. Okay. Let’s go to the next slide. So one of the things that I’m really trying to do is get other departments involved. Okay. So, I try to meet with as many people as possible to see if they’re trying, if they wouldn’t mind, getting themselves involved in podcasting, for instance, with biology, instead of writing reports and have them write scripts and podcast about something, history.
We can create documentaries, podcasts, you know, just how about having a math contest? Okay. and before the mic. So the feeling and of course, we can’t really see, you know, problems being solved. But at the same time, we can kind of sense the fun involved in math. You know, I have students who are playing video games while they’re podcasting.
And of course, we can’t see the video game, but we can hear the excitement in their voices. Teachers should be encouraged to use imagination and create ideas with their students, so think out of the box. I highly encourage you to do that. So let’s talk about the money, The equipment that’s needed. All right. So here we go. Okay everybody.
This is of course the budget that I had to work with. Thank you. I love it. So a mike and, you know, typical. Mike. Something like this, about 125, you have the zoom podcast recorder, which is about 200. This is the machine I use. And of course, you need a good editing software, which, you know, like Adobe Premiere or Adobe Audition.
And of course, you have to have an SD card. So before I go into the booth, this part over here is pretty reasonable, I think. You can go to Amazon.com, type in podcasting equipment and see which one is good for you, see the reviews and and and of course, if you have any questions, you’re more than welcome to contact me.
And then of course the booth, the $18,000 booth. And you might be thinking, oh my God, this is expensive. Yeah. It is. You know, it is expensive. Again, for me it was worth the money. But at the same time, I also acknowledge that some school districts, even though they may want to, spend that money, they simply can’t.
So let’s go over here to the next step down. So instead of a booth, you can use the shields as my buddy over here. you know, Johnny Jackal, and I forget. Anyway, I’ll call him. Oh, and that’s his name. what did he call himself? Let me go back. oh, Mr. Smiley there, Mr. Smiley and Johnny Jackal.
Hey, whatever they want to be called, I’m cool with it. So this set up here is about $110. And, you know, we have several of them. This set up here is, $225. You know, you may not have a booth, but at the same time, you can still do pretty darn decent job with the shield, okay? Because it keeps the voice in, and you can get a decent amount of quality in the sound.
But let’s say you want the booth. Who wouldn’t want a booth, right? It looks so cool. Like you just can’t afford $18,000. Well, okay, this is what I did at my house. Look at that. I took a bunch of insulation, insulating foams. Okay. And I went to Lowe’s, and I, I had, I brought them home. I bought about eight of them.
One, two, three, four, five, six. So about six of them. Sorry. and I made some myself. Okay. And look at this. Let’s go ahead and go to the next slide and I’ll show you. This is me and my boy. We’re podcasting in the very room. Okay. So you can go to Mr. Haig’s class.com, where I teach, podcasting.
And there’s just me talk. I’m not there, there’s no sound in there. So there you look at that. Look at all the green foam in there. It’s the same thing. Same outcome. Except this whole thing cost me $600 as opposed to 18,000. And again, if you want me to consult with you on how to build this thing, you let me know.
All it take was again was insulating foam and a bunch of PVC pipes. And there you have your own booth. Okay. And of course, my boy and I, we’re very close, and we kind of, we have fun together. All right. So here are some of the requirements. Now, I had a pretty interesting question and brought up in zoom saying, you know, why would I want to, bring students in a toxic environment such as social media?
Well, that’s a very fair question, and I have to agree with you. Okay, but social media can be a toxic place. So before I talk about that a little bit, first of all, I highly advise you that, you know, you control your social media, you know, by social media. But let’s go into first to prepare for a podcast.
First of all, everybody should have a logo needs to be tasteful. And, you know, you should have your group name, you know, a diversified narrative. Okay. For on the floor. Grand. Cass. Mira. Mira. Yeah. Okay. And of course, it’s okay to have your regular pictures, given that your parents gave the approval. Okay. We were very, very conscious about protecting the students.
We don’t want the students to get exposed to, of course, the toxic environment of social media. Keep, have a timer while you’re podcasting. Be aware of the time. And I’m sorry that it says pretty much get there soon. Okay, so this is, this is for my school, so I will tell them fourth period is our lunch period.
So I tell them to get there as soon as possible. and then that way we can, sorry, I kind of slipping over here. And then of course, it’s okay to do 25 minutes or even less. Okay, so here is a sequence. First, 10s should have some sort of music introduction. Then talk about the project and this thing is just not behaving.
And then finally, stick to the topic about 15 or 20 minutes. Now, if you have a second topic and you got to go 30 minutes, well then new topic. just keep on talking until you’re done. Okay? So again, I would recommend one topic per podcast. That way you can cut it short or you can keep it focused.
And if you want to do two topics, you know, talk about baseball and then football, that’s fine. Just make sure you are able to have a nice clean break. I would not recommend mixing and matching, topics. And of course you want to have a good outro music. All right. And next thing is editing I use audition or I use premiere.
One of the two. it might okay. Of course. Again, that costs money. You’ve got to be a subscriber to the Adobe Creative Cloud. I’m sure that Adobe can give you a good deal, so I’d encourage you to talk to them about that. But a lot of people use audacity and GarageBand. That’s pretty popular stuff over there.
And, so I always have to say, just kind of explore and see what’s best for you, best for your students. All right. Now, another thing is, you need to be able to comment on the content. So while we’re promoting our podcast and uploading it to social media and websites, I mean, that’s really where it belongs.
Us uploading it to a certain spot. so other people there. But you gotta be very careful, okay? We need to maintain the integrity of your school. We need to maintain the integrity of your district. Well, you know, you don’t want your students to use profanity. We don’t want your students to use any kind of vulgar language that is offensive to others.
If they do, you need to talk to them. but sometimes. Let me hear me out, though sometimes students need to just express themselves. They need to be express themselves to be angry or to be sad or something happened to them. You know, something happened to their family. They want to talk it out, let them talk it out.
Just don’t publish it, okay? Give them their own SD card. They can go ahead and speak into the mic, give and then of course give them back their SD card. Don’t upload it. Just keep it on a local drive. Do not publish it unless you get their permission. And of course, their parents should sign a waiver.
Okay. A waiver to release everything, to make sure that, hey, we’re publishing this and this is, you need to be aware of that. Okay? So where do we release this? Okay, first of all, let’s acknowledge this school owns the content as a school because you’re inside the property of the school, you’re inside the you’re using the equipment of the school, the content belongs to us.
Now. We can keep it forever. But usually I make a deal that once the students graduate and as long as they graduate together and they’re no longer a part of the school, then they can take the content, do what they want. I mean, at that point, we don’t have a say in the matter. and so what we’re doing right now is taking our content and uploading it to NPR and, and trying to find ways to go into iHeart Blogtalk Radio and Apple Podcasts.
This is really the ending point. So you need to the students need to know that there is they’re going somewhere, it’s going somewhere. And it may make them, pretty popular or they may get a lot of hits, they may get a lot of views, they may get a lot of reviews. And, let’s go to the next slide where I believe we’re going to be talking about a question about social media websites.
Here’s the thing. Once again, the school has to own the show. The school has to be able to to upload or remove. You as a school official. As a teacher, you need to control the social media accounts. So do not let the students create an Instagram or a YouTube or a well. Of course nobody uses Facebook, but even that okay, you don’t want them to upload or download or have control.
Okay? Do not give them the username and password. You just go ahead and do it yourself. As a teacher, you decide what goes up and you decide what goes down. Okay, make sure you, create, a, an account on each respective social media site. But you are receiving the comments. You are receiving, the feedback, if there are, you want to have a situation where you control the comments.
So any comments that someone write that is, should be seen by you first before you give the okay for it to be published. Do not allow people to write whatever they want. It can cause a lot of trauma for the students. And of course, it makes you look bad. So we don’t want that. Okay. So make sure you take absolute full control of the social media.
Absolute full control of the website. Do not let your students read, negative reviews because it could be down. You know, they’re they’re podcasting because they want positivity okay. So just keep that in mind. All right. Now, copyright information. of course, you know. Sorry. Let me go to the copyright. There we go. So do not go to Getty Images and make sure you don’t go to Google.
Let me show you a thing or two. let’s go ahead and Google dogs should spell. All right, so here we have dogs. Okay. I love dogs and okay. So now what you need to do is click on tools okay. User rights and Creative Commons license as you see that right there okay. And as a result you want to click there.
And these are the images that you should be able to use. So as you can see there’s quite a bit there’s quite a lot of them. And you know there’s some good and good good images. Okay. So that’s that’s what you want to use. Once again, you want to go to tools. tools, creative client.
sorry. Let’s go. Creative Commons licensing. Okay. So that’s, you know, make sure that you don’t get ding for using copyright information and Getty Images especially tough. So we don’t want to deal with them. You could use do okay do use Envato Elements okay. That’s where we get most of our, you know, these these music free.
They’re stock this free stock music and of course Creative Commons. All these are pretty good sources. All right, that, leads me to my final slide there I am. Okay, if you have any questions or comments, please fill out the survey. again, I am Mr. Hague. I’m a national award winning educator. and of course, I work over at Gladstone High School at A05 school district.
There’s my phone number. There’s my email again. Any questions at all? No question is too dumb except the ones that are not being asked. I’m sure you as, as educators would know that. So give me a call. Thank you. Take care.