Judging by the number of listens showing on my podcast page, I am fairly certain that not too many will venture into the audio atmosphere created here by my students.

I will, however, mention on my own that several of these efforts are actually produced quite well. I have been fairly critical of the efforts of my students on their podcasts. Let me explain:

First off, you need to come up with a subject that people will care about. Podcasting has become commonplace out there in the real world and this area of media is becoming quite saturated. Just because you have the equipment to make a “professional sounding” podcast, doesn’t mean that you can, should or will. There is a successful formula that exists and it would be prudent to adhere to at least some of the trusted methods that are used on successful pods you can find.

The reason the subheading above mentions that these are “parting shots” is because all of these students ARE NOT continuing with my class for the second semester. This is unprecedented in my years here at Elder and although several of these young men may be following a passion for writing in their futures, they will not be doing so as an official member of The Purple Quill staff.

High school boys like to hear themselves talk and think they have a valuable opinion on just about everything, despite the fact that they have spent less than two dozen years on this earth. But with all that said, some of these episodes that I have uploaded here on New Year’s Day are at least worth listening to.

Sam Jackson did some nice improvement from his first music quiz. And this one (with a Christmas slant) is pretty well done.

Michael Lindle has again gone above and beyond with his submission(s). He was very smart in designing his pod by enlisting the help of two faculty members  (Mr. Greg Dickman and Mr. Spencer Kandra) who share his passion for movies. These three have easily outpaced all members of my class in total minutes occupying the studio. Lindle has even been confident enough to share his efforts under his own podcast station, but I still share the two episodes he produced for this assignment here. Episode 5 is a timely discussion of Die Hard (widely argued as a Christmas Movie) and episode 6 features a very fine interview of Mr. Dickman’s classmate, John Wagner, who works in movie production. The hour long discussion flows smoothly and evenly.

I was again impressed with the football acumen and insightful analysis of Reid Lanter and Ethan Kramer in their NFL pod. Despite the fact that it involves a weekend of games far in the past, (NFL week 15) the commentary and use of actual statistics shows a level of understanding beyond that of most high school students.

Sam Jones loves to talk about movies and the discussions/arguments in our class are legendary. Sam welcomes Lindle to discuss the year’s best and worst efforts on the silver screen. Ben Weigand uses his time to interview classmate Jones about his future plans.

The Three Peas in a Podcast guys continue their solid work with two more episodes (each produced independently) and I found them also quite easy to listen to.

You can see all the episodes as part of the continuing efforts to upload Elder-related content beyond our one hundred year anniversary on my re-named station: 100 Years and Beyond on Spotify.