3rd Grade Biomes Podcasts
Third grade students at Laburnum Elementary have been learning about different biomes, and their teacher, Ms. Emanuelson, wanted to learn about Garage Band. So today they used Garage Band to make biome podcasts. Each program on the Macs has its specialty: for Pixie its drawing, for Keynote its animation, and for Garage Band its sound effects. So even though students wanted to include pictures of their biomes and record voiceovers, which are possible in both Pixie and Keynote, they wanted the additional ability to add a musical soundtrack and ambience noises from their habitat (like waterfall-, monkey-, and bird-sounds for the rainforest). Garage Band makes it easy to do this. First the students recorded their voiceover. Next, I showed them how to search the Internet for pictures, drag them into the Garage Band podcast, and make them sync with the voiceover. Finally we added a soundtrack from Garage Band’s music library and selected sound effects. The final projects turned out great. You can see two student samples here: The Rainforest by Daliah and The Desert by Jose.