1. Presented at the 2013 Council for Economic Education Conference in Baltimore,
MD by Arch Grieve, History & Economics Teacher at
The Dayton Regional STEM School
Saturday, October 5 2013, 9-10am, Session H-21
Micro Meets Macro: Using Podcasts in the PBL
Econ Classroom

2. About me
•From the Dayton Regional STEM School
•Teach History and Economics
•Drove from Ohio with my wife, Amanda. Tried to
stop and see some sights but ran into some
problems...

3. Format
Want to get through as much information as possible and explain the
overarching goals behind the project, what I think it accomplishes, and how
to do this in your own classroom.
•20 minutes- Overview of project
•25 minutes- Step-by-Step how to
•15 minutes- Questions/Discussion (please write down questions as you
come to them unless they are short clarifying questions, as we may answer
them during the presentation and I want to be sure to get through the entire
presentation)
•I will have a link to my academia.edu account at the end where you can find
all of the notes I present, rubrics, handouts, and materials

4. Part I
Project Overview

5. Learning Targets
• Students learn about the local and global economy through this
project and how it impacts individuals' lives (state standard)
• National standards include: trade, specialization, markets and
prices, competition and market structure, institutions, money,
inflation, interest rates, and entrepreneurship
• Ohio Standards include: Government and the Economy:
understanding how governmental actions impact the consumer
and entrepreneur
• School I teach at really values project-based learning
• My standard: teaching students that incentives matter!

6. Inspiration
•I'm a radio fan
•Wanted to have students make a product
that was real, easily published, and
would connect us to the community while
incorporating real research
•Let's listen to a short excerpt from Olivia
and Riddhi on the effect of NCR leaving
Dayton in relation to local
unemployment...

7. Student Directions

8. Rubric

9. Podcast Components

10. Essential questions
• These are actually student-developed
• Students also develop their own hypothesis about what they expect to find in
their interview
• Students read news articles and research economic data to come up with a
question
• Only requirement is that they have to show the intersection between Micro and
Macroeconomics (which I define somewhat loosely)
• What I'm trying to get students to understand is that economic statistics and
governmental decisions are more than just boring news items, they have a real
impact on their lives
• For example, a question could be "How might potential sequestration cuts at
the national level impact the local economy through cuts in WPAFB contracts?"

11. Final product
•Students create podcasts using
the Audacity program on their
netbooks
•Students use Google Voice to
record interviews and convert
them to mp3 files
•Podcasts are then put onto a feed
burner and uploaded to a class
podcast page, available on iTunes

12. Partners
• The STEM School has a lot of business partners to
draw upon
• This is a great way to get local businesses involved
and have students ‘dig deeper’ into understanding
how individuals and businesses make decisions when
faced with tough choices
• Community support makes this much easier to
accomplish, and there are ways you can go about
seeking help (discussed later)

13. Implementation
• Students spend roughly a week researching, preparing questions, finding
people to interview, and setting up times for interviews, then at least a
week editing their podcasts and doing follow up research
• Students record their interview using Google Voice (usually) or in person
through their netbooks (all students have their own netbooks, which makes
this much easier)
• Students begin editing the podcast with the Audacity program to
incorporate elements that enhance the listening appeal
• Had someone from WYSO (local NPR station) come in and discuss editing
and making podcast appealing to listeners
• Students upload project to archive.org, send me the link, and I grade them
and put them online using Blogger.com

14. Part II
How to do this!

15. Step by Step Process
• Any PBL project must be well-prepared, or it
will fail
• Goal is to take you through the process I
went through, much of which could be
substituted with other software programs or
recording devices. Still, this is how I’ve done
it, and this is what I know works

16. Step 1-Figure out learning targets
• Project could be easily adapted to a wide range of
learning targets and content areas, so make sure you
are meeting your building and state requirements is
the first step so students get out of it what you want
them to get out of it
• I have included my learning targets at the beginning,
which are aligned with my state requirements as well
as the 5 Qualities we have as a school. I’ve also tried
to align them with national standards.

17. Step 2-Find partners
I created a form using ‘Google Drive’ to send
out to partners for help. I have a PDF of all of
the steps I’m going through so you can see
exactly how I did this and replicate it in your
own classroom.

19. Step 3-Set up Hosting Services
I use blogspot.com (or blogger) through Google to host the links of the podcasts, which are
archived on archive.org.
Students only do the first part of this process, and I have directions for how they are to
upload their podcasts that are specific to their computers/the software program ‘Audacity’

20. Hosting Services/Programs
• Audacity- Used to record podcasts
• Google Voice- Used to record interviews
• Archive.org- Used to host podcasts digitally
• Blogger.com- Used to publish podcasts in user-friendly
manner & as a step in feedburning process
• Feedburner- Used to create a ‘Feed’ to publish
podcasts through iTunes
• iTunes- For the end user

21. Audacity
• This is the student end of the production processs
• You can use a lot of different types of programs to
create podcasts
• Ideally would use Garageband, but not enough Macs
or iPads
• Key is to get a final product in MP3 format to upload to
iTunes. To do this, students must export using a
program called LAME, and I have included steps for
how to do this in the step-by-step instructions I give to
students

22. Step 4- Recording
• Had someone from NPR come and talk about recording
• I have attached her tips for the students in the PDF version, which you are
free to share with your own students
• At this stage it is great if you can find someone from a local radio station to
come in and talk about how to edit successfully to make the podcast sound
professional
• Rubrics are important, and I’ve attached the step-by-step process I give my
students so they know what to shoot for as their final product
• Make sure to have them listen to previous ones! I have them grade someone
else’s podcast from a previous class so they know what is expected of them
and that this is not an automatic A. Content is graded separately from
production

23. Recording
• I have students set up a Google Voice account for the interviews to record
them, which allows you to record interviews and export them as MP3s
• I show them how to record in class and take them through the steps
• Most important step is to enable call recording!
• During the call, they can simply press ‘4’ once they have interviewee on the
phone and it will record the conversation
• Students only have to give the interviewee their Google Voice number, and I
allow them to coordinate this with the interviewee. They can link them to a cell
phone or use my own Google Voice account in a pinch (and my own phone)
and I can send them the file, although I prefer that they figure out how to do this
• This is where the contact form comes in handy, as they know how to get in
touch with the interviewees and can arrange a time beforehand

24. Step 5- Uploading
• Important: Make sure students understand the process for uploading podcasts
• Instructions for a step-by-step you can give them have been included as a word
document so you can personalize. They are specific to archive.org
• You must create an archive.org account, and it will be necessary to give students the
password for this
• I created a gmail account (drssworldhistory@gmail.com) that I use for many projects
where they upload to archive.org and I use for nothing else
• After creating it, set up an account at archive.org and make a simple password, then
personalize the student instructions for yourself to give to students so they can upload
their podcasts when they are finished. Makes it much easier for you to manage than
uploading them all themselves
• Create a way for students to send you their links when finished. I use a Google Form
through Google Drive, give them the link to the form, and they input their names and the
URL to their podcasts, which timestamps them so I can check they are submitted on time

25. Step 6- Getting a blogger
account• Next you have to set up an account on Blogger.com, a Google service
• Once completed, you can make a ‘Post’ for each students podcast
• Inside the post I have the students create a description of their podcast, which become the
‘show notes’ for their podcast when it shows up on iTunes (if you set up this feature on
Feedburner)
• Within the post, include a link (I usually link the word ‘podcast’ or the title of the podcast, if it
appears in the post) to the podcast they uploaded to archive.org
• Once you set up the feedburner this link will automatically be discovered by the feedburner
and within a day or two it will appear in iTunes, depending on how fast it moves
• *This is where most of the problems arise, so if there is a specific issue you are dealing with
there is usually a forum you can find by googling your specific issue to help you pinpoint the
issue

26. This links to
archive.org
podcast
URL

27. Step 7- Feedburners
• Feedburner.com allows you to publish your podcast. It essentially takes
your content and makes it into a format people want to read (or listen to, in
the case of podcasts)
• You can set up Feedburner to take your content from a specific blogger
account
• Good instructions for how to do this can be found here:
https://support.google.com/feedburner/answer/78465?hl=en and have been
included as a PDF in the documents supplied.
• There are specific instructions you can follow if you intend to link this to
iTunes, our last step, which will make your podcast more marketable (like
adding an ability for people to read your notes and including a picture,
which you can create, which will show up when people look at it on iTunes)
• Apple also has a good link on many troubleshooting topics for podcasts
found here: http://www.apple.com/itunes/podcasts/specs.html (also PDF)

28. Step 8- Submit to iTunes
• The last step is submitting to iTunes for approval, which usually takes under
a week. You can submit to other services, but this is the only one I target.
• Directions for submission include logging into iTunes on your computer, so
you need to have the program installed before submitting and then follow
their steps, including going through the iTunes store.
• Steps can be found here: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1819 (also a PDF)
• From here, people can either discover your podcast through iTunes, or you
can also advertise through the local paper, a letter home to parents, school
Facebook page, or more. Depends on how much you want to get the word
out!

29. Step 9- Make Public
• Our school has a website and a presence on social media, so I have used
see to get the word out
• Making the work public tends to take the student work to the next level, as
students realize that anyone will be able to go onto iTunes and hear what
they have done and that we are advertising this to the community
• Also is good for your school, as community members like to hear these
kinds of stories! The kids are actually doing some valuable reporting in
many of these podcasts!

30. Step 10- Reflection
• I would like to figure out ways to enhance the rigor of the research involved,
as currently students are required to find a statistic about the macro
economy that they can "put a face to" through their interview. This is not
always from a governmental source, like the Bureau of Labor Statistics, but I
would like ideas on how to ensure the material they use is both rigorous and
accessible
• Was able to incorporate feedback from a project protocol at my school on
ideas surrounding how to streamline partner involvement and make it easier
to connect students to our partners
• Also opportunities here to incorporate cross-curricular units

31. Questions
• At this point I will not be offended if some of you leave while
I answer questions... If I weren't presenting I would be out
in the lobby getting coffee before the next presentation!
• I know this is a lot of information, so please ask me about
the steps that you would like me to clarify or things you'd
like to know more about
• I have all of my materials used for this project (rubric,
student instructions, this presentation, etc.) on
academia.edu. Search for "Arch Grieve" or take a business
card with the link on it:
http://www.academia.edu/4478316/Presentation_on_Local_
Economics_Podcast_Project_to_Council_for_Economic_Ed
ucation
• If you don't get a card, just email me and I will send you the
presentation: arch.grieve@wright.edu
Or click here!