Participate and share: Poster 
Podcasts have increasingly become a professional development model for educators worldwide. Podcasts encourage sharing of teacher stories, engaging with best practices, and helping teachers to gain a statewide, national, and/or international perspective in their practice. However, many of these educator-centric podcasts have become solo projects of individuals or small groups hoping to share a perspective with the larger community. In order to help support educator-created podcasts, a group of Utah educators has created a podcast network to help support different threads of professional learning and development for educators. Their model for sharing, building capacity and audiences, and helping to promote each other's works within their podcasts provides other states with a model for creating their own teacher-created and maintained podcasting network.
Participants will learn how to create a teacher-centric, -created podcast for professional learning by exploring the three podcasts that make up our network. The three podcasts that are included in this network are:
UEN Homeroom - Created and maintained by Utah Education Network, this podcast started in the Fall of 2018 with a focus on local educators, leaders, and students from a variety of perspectives. The co-hosts of this podcast are Dani Sloan and Matthew Winters, both local Utah educational trainers. In the last two years, UEN Homeroom has extended its focus to exploring topics important to Utah educators with national and international guests.
The UCET Podcast started in November 2020 to spotlight the amazing things that are happening in Utah classrooms. Matt Winters started the podcast during the 2020 - 2021 school year, then Kiera became the host for the UCET podcast. During the 2nd season, Kiera cross-collaborated with Matt on the UEN Homeroom podcast to spotlight the state edtech endorsement competencies. The UCET podcast is currently in its 3rd season, releasing monthly episodes throughout the school year. This year the UCET podcast will feature UCET coalition members anticipating the UCET yearly conference theme of “Together at UCET.” Each episode follows a similar format - Kiera arranges guests for an interview, records a brief intro, followed by the interview usually with 2-3 guests, then a short outro where we highlight something special happening in Utah. The parts are then edited together and scheduled for a release in the last week of the month.
The Utah Teacher Fellowship program provides full-time educators with high-quality training, support, and opportunities to interact with state and local policymakers with the goals of improving the teaching and learning conditions in Utah’s public schools and a chance to refine their teacher leadership skills. Teachers in the program choose between 4 different areas to work in during their fellowship - editorial, policy & empowerment, teacher engagement, and social media. This year, the social media team decided to start a podcast focusing on authentic teacher stories. Every month, they highlight a different teacher. Each episode follows a similar format - Audryn, Ryan, and Kayla arrange guests for an interview, Ryan and Audryn (the hosts) start with a brief introduction, followed by the interview usually with 1-2 guests, then a short outro going over the big ideas. The episode is then edited by Kayla to get it ready for publication by the end of each month. The episode is then shared on all the Teacher Fellow social media channels.
With the hosts of all three podcasts, participants in this session will explore how to create their own podcasts, how to produce engaging content month-to-month, promote content in individual communities, and connect to other podcasts to form a local educator podcast network.
In a one-hour Interactive Session, presenters will follow this outline:
- 5 minutes - Welcome/Introductions
- 10 minutes - Exploring each Utah educator podcast and how they produce their content for educators. Presenters will also share how the network started and continues to help build capacity and professional learning in Utah.
- 10 minutes - Presenters will explore why it is important to share educator stories and how different it can be when an educator shares their story in their own voice. Presenters will also share how to work with guests and produce questions for interviews.
- 10 minutes - Presenters will engage audience members in how each podcast produces their episodes from end to end (planning, interviewee contact, recording, editing, and sharing).
- 15 minutes - Presenters will share how podcasts can be used as professional learning and development for educators citing specific examples from their experiences developing and sharing podcasts with Utah educators.
- 5 minutes - Each podcast will share their favorite tip/trick for creating podcasts with and for educators.
- 5 minutes - Closing remarks/Q&A from audience
“13 Educator-Approved Podcasts to Listen to This Year.” Edutopia, George Lucas Educational Foundation, 28 Aug. 2021, www.edutopia.org/article/13-educator-approved-podcasts-listen-year.
Home - UCET. https://ucet.org/. Accessed 28 Sept. 2022.
Homeroom Podcast - UEN. www.uen.org/development/homeroom.shtml. Accessed 28 Sept. 2022.
“Podcasting Creates an Audience for Student Storytellers.” Edutopia, George Lucas Educational Foundation, 6 Aug. 2019, www.edutopia.org/article/podcasting-creates-audience-student-storytellers.
“Teaching Podcasting: A Curriculum Guide for Educators.” NPR.org, NPR, 15 Nov. 2018, www.npr.org/2018/11/15/662116901/teaching-podcasting-a-curriculum-guide-for-educators.
UCET Podcast with Kiera Beddes on Apple Podcasts. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ucet-podcast-with-kiera-beddes/id1539752646. Accessed 28 Sept. 2022.
Utah Education Network. https://www.uen.org/. Accessed 28 Sept. 2022.
Utah Teacher Fellows Podcast on Apple Podcasts. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/utah-teacher-fellows-podcast/id1606561691. Accessed 28 Sept. 2022.
Utah Teacher Fellows • Hope Street Group. https://hopestreetgroup.org/teacher-fellows/utteacherfellows/. Accessed 28 Sept. 2022.
Return
Trips and Tours