This resource is a year and half old -- ancient history by today's standards -- but it is one of the best sources I have come across that demonstrates and explains the value of student audio production.
Barbara Ganley, who teaches creative writing at Middlebury College, asks her students to record audio for a variety of purposes. Students record themselves reading their writing aloud, giving one-minute summaries of their research, summaries of the paper-in-progress as a way for them to test how well they can articulate their thinking, and to record interviews for their research papers. Ganley writes:
[Students] are now comfortable using the iPod as a tool of expression, of idea capturing, of processing and reflecting…. they will start commenting on one another's podcasts, noting the characteristics of each other's speech versus writing and working on formal oral presentations. I've also encouraged them to use podcasting in their other classes, as ways to organize and study material, to practice speaking for their foreign language classes (then listening to themselves and making corrections). Embedding "drafts" of their oral presentations offers opportunities for peer feedback, for self-review.
I see these intensive, small uses of podcasting as immensely useful as clips within their essays as well as through their writing and reflection process. They can embed excerpts of their interviews -- or oral readings of a poem being analyzed -- right into the Web-based documents, letting the reader hear the voices of the people interviewed or the sound of lines from a play
She as a blog post that lists several examples such as this conversation between Ganley and her student about the student's developing essay.
