Being Heard: Remixing Critical Literacy for Active Citizenship is a book published by PETAA in 2025. It is written by Joel Windle, David Caldwell, Melanie Baak and Aidan Windle, based on a research project funded by PETAA. The book explores how traditional and emerging text types can be integrated into the curriculum to empower students. With a particular focus on developing podcasts, this book shows how classrooms can become vibrant spaces for students to co-design, remix, and take ownership of their learning. The book contains a full chapter on "Working with Podcasts", but in addition the authors provided a wealth of digital resources to support any teacher in introducing podcasts as a text format in their classrooms.
Featured podcasts
Examples of assessment rubrics for assessing podcasts
Other school-produced podcasts
Podcasts on environment and sustainability
'How to' videos and interviews with professional podcasts
- ‘The student podcaster’ self-paced online modules are ideal for educators and students wishing to avoid the morass of ‘how to’ guides that are often commercial or extremely technical. The modules were developed by the New South Wales Department of Education.
- ‘Project Audio: teaching students how to produce their own podcasts’, on the New York Times website, shares guidelines and resources for a classroom podcasting project.
- ‘Starting your podcast: a guide for students’ was originally created by NPR in the United States for entrants in a student podcasting competition, but is also useful for others.
- NPR’s ‘Teaching podcasting: a curriculum guide for educators’ is very thorough and has great examples and resources embedded.
- Buzzsprout is a podcast hosting platform with a guide to starting a podcast.
- How to start a podcast in 2024: a beginner’s step-by-step guide from Spotify for podcasters
- Interview with industry professional Colin Gray about how to start a podcast.
- James Deeney interviews various other hosts of successful podcasts.
- Short Channel 9 television segment on Aimee Chan’s podcast, Kids Pod. It shows her using a mobile phone and her laptop to record interviews and edit the podcast at her home.
- ‘Tips for creating podcasts with students with Michele Haiken’, on the Easy EdTech Podcast with Monica Burns. The target audience is teachers. The interview begins 2:35 minutes into the video, although the part about creating podcasts with students begins at 6:15 minutes.
- ‘How to start podcasting with students using Soundtrap’, with teacher Sam Kary. This will mostly be useful for those considering using Soundtrap, a recording and editing program that charges subscription fees after a 30-day free trial.
- ‘How to record a podcast for school’, with quirky YouTuber Beard Squared. This video demonstrates the technical aspects of audio production, particularly the use of AudioMass, one of the free online recording and editing programs.
Resources for identifying 'fake news'
- Book - Can you believe it? How to spot fake news and find the facts (Grant & Marcotte, 2022)
- Video - The truth about conspiracy theories: QAnon, coronavirus, 5G & the deep state | Explained (ABC BTN, 30 October 2020)
- Video - Deepfakes explained: the best of 2019, how they’re made & how to spot them (ABC BTN, 18 October 2019)
- Video - Doing a reverse image search (Irani, ABC Education, 24 September 2019)
- BTN media literacy series (ABC BTN, 25 April 2023)
- Interactive lesson from RMIT ABC ‘Fact check essentials’ (ABC, 1 October 2024)
Resources to introduce slam poetry
Further viewing
- Having a voice and making a difference: Molly Steer. Molly is a young Australian from northern Queensland. She has encouraged schools, local government and beyond to reconsider the use of single-use plastic straws in an effort to improve the environment. Molly's TED Talk can be seen here. Molly on BTN can be watched here.