Last Updated on June 25, 2021
The Listenwise team had an exciting opportunity this summer to work with talented high school journalists at the New England Center for Investigative Reporting’s summer workshop at Boston University. We taught the students how to make a podcast.
These young journalists came from all over the country, as close as local Boston high schools and as far as Los Angeles, to delve into investigative journalism. We joined a two week summer session for brief mini-lessons on how to write, record and create a short audio story. The student’s investigative topic was performance enhancing drugs – from Adderall to steroids. These high schoolers created amazing written investigative reports with the help of their instructor Jeremy Fox, a reporter for the Boston Globe. They then took on the challenge of rewriting portions of the written work for audio.
After choosing a focus and writing a snappier, more audio friendly, version of their work we taught them simple audio recording and editing tools like GarageBand and Audacity. Some recorded their interviews. Others just recorded their voices on the final project. Students took to editing and mixing like pros. Watching students experience the strangeness and excitement of hearing themselves as they were editing was fun to witness.
Student Feedback
The students liked learning how to create audio stories.
“This was the first time that I had been taught the process of making podcasts and I think it will be useful in the future.”
“I’m pretty proud of my podcast! I’m surprised it came out so well in such a short period of time.”
Listen to this podcast from Olive Sherman a junior at Santa Monica High School. She investigated the gender split when young people receive ADHD diagnoses and the positive impact early diagnosis can have.
