The Great Thanksgiving Listen is an initiative that is encouraging and empowering students to create an oral history of the United States by recording interviews with their elders using the free Story Corps app. And while the program requires students be over 13 to publish their work using this specific app, the curricular ideas (check out the toolkit at the bottom of this page) can be modified and used by students of all ages. Discover more in this quick 1 minute video.

The best way to learn more about this movement is to listen to some the heartwarming, and sometimes heartbreaking, stories. Below is a video of one animated story, as well as a link to many of the stories Story Corps has captured over the years. You can sort the stories by collection (i.e. justice, military, parenthood, etc.), date, and more.

Check out the toolkit and podcast below. There are many great resources that you can put to use right away.

Podcasting has many benefits. Not only will students improve their fluency, speaking skills, and confidence, but they will learn positive ways to become producers, not only consumers, of content. Listen to the students of Willowdale Elementary, located in Omaha, Nebraska:

GarageBand is a great tool for podcast creation. Learn the ins and outs below:

What can your students podcast?

www.edtechteacher.org provided these specific ideas for integrating audio recording:

• Students interview relatives about their life histories, and then combine the audio interview with family photos in a video project.
• Students write a radio drama based on a historical event and record their show (complete with commercials).
• Students learn about a different country by interviewing a recent traveler. They record the interview and then create a digital travel album.
• Students create a faux advertising campaign to convince immigrants to settle the new American colonies.
• Students use audio recording to interview sources for articles for a class newspaper.
• Students write and record short stories and add music and sound effects.
• Teacher records a tutorial that students listen to on their own
• Present student writing through a class radio drama or a poetry slam.
• Teacher records and broadcasts group discussions.
• Teachers might record students reading a story as a fluency assessment, or as a foreign language pronunciation activity.
• On a field trip, students use an iPod with a voice recorder to take notes and a digital camera to take photos. They then create a guided tour in iMovie.