We are youth radio advocates. Producing podcasts in educational settings not only meets core literacy standards across subjects, but it gives students a way to express what matters to them in a creative, and guided project-based learning setting.
Podcasting requires collaboration, research, writing, voicing, technical skills, time management, organization and critical thinking, and the list continues.
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But the three arching reasons to jump into digital storytelling (also known as media arts and officially the 5th fine art form) is that it helps students build future ready technical skills; teaches them media literacy (ability to ACCESS, ANALYZE, EVALUATE, CREATE, and ACT using all forms of communication); and sparks civic engagement - allowing students to engage in social, emotional and environmental issues.
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For more information on integrating podcasting and filmmaking into your classroom, contact Suzi Montgomery at the Montgomery Media Arts Institute
Mini Golf Classic with SQuids
Leonardo Museum SQuid Exhibit
youth podcasts
Taking Heroism Out of History
Funded by the Utah State Historical Society, this podcast series project set out to see if we couldn't make history feel more personal. Based on a selection of interviews with men and women ranchers Suzi had done when she worked on the Southern Utah Oral History Project, middle school students chose a rancher they could relate to and swapped stories, finding what they had in common and blending their voices into a shared story. It was a multi-generational far reaching project, and though at first the project was a hard sell to these teens, it turns out that storytelling can break barriers.
Stand Up or Fall Out!
Integrating activism and art (ActiveArt), 8th grade students from City Academy Charter School in Salt Lake City took a stand and a voice about nuclear testing and waste storage. They studies the historical issue in Utah by reading Downwinders: An Atomic Tale; interviewing fallout survivors of the 1950s Nevada Nuclear Testing; camping, reflecting, painting, writing, and photographing affected areas in the desert; and creating ActivismArt (placing nests of "nuclear-active eggs" around and staging a full-size cutout of a Plutonium Blond Bombshell at a SLC Gallery Stroll and a HEAL Utah mini golf fundraiser.
1957 Miss Atomic Bomb, Lee Merlin
Courtesy NEH
postcards from outer space
From Wasatch Elementary School in Salt Lake City, UT
Frankenstein Radio Play
A group of Salt Lake City teens at City Academy Charter school pay homage to an often unnoticed slice of local Utah history, the Jewish community. They tell the deeply personal stories of three Jewish Utahns, a former soldier during the Holocaust, a historian and author, and a business owner.