What is special about Kid's Talk Radio?

Kid's Talk Radio
Getting Kids Excited About Learning
A Program by Bob Barboza, SuperSchool Software

Kid's Talk Radio is a creative high motivational learning program that helps students to listen, speak, read, write, and compute. Our program is designed for students in grades 4 through 8. Kid's Talk Radio was designed for special needs and gifted and talented students. The program is currently being expanded to include bilingual and at-risk students in grades 9 through 12.

Teachers and students are provided with a Kid's Talk Radio Station Manager's Kits. Each kit has all the tools you need to train radio reporters, student researchers, sound effects engineers, hardware specialist, hardware specialist, DJ's and station managers.

Kid's Talk Radio provides a wonderful opportunity to integrate singing, playing musical instruments, and using the human voice as a sound effects machine. We created a student sound effects choir and are teaching our students about how sound effects were made during the golden days of old time radio.

To insure that students produce quality work suitable for radio broadcasting, they must complete a training course to help them to perform at a Kid's Talk Radio oral reading and writing rubric level of five or six. Students have individual learning plans and they produce Podcast and Kid's Talk Radio Z Casts for the Internet, iPods and school Intranet radio stations.

Students are trained to build custom radio station databases for instant web publishing and radio station job simulation projects. Teachers and students use "Database Projects for Kids" and FileMaker Pro for Kid's Talk Radio learning projects.

Our students have various learning styles. We use FableVision's BrainCogs program to help meet the unique needs of our students. BrainCogs helps our students to develop personalized strategies that help them to work more productively sticking to tight deadlines. Students have to study hard to complete their writing and oral reading assignments. BrainCogs helps the Kid's Talk Radio News Teams to organize information, remembering reading passages, prioritizing news information, shifting attention skills, and checking their news broadcasts before turning in their work.

To help our students with the difficult job of writing for Kid's Talk Radio, we use FableVision's Essay Express. This program works along the side our schools writing program, the Kid's Talk Radio Graphic Organizers, and Writer's Workshop. Essay Express does a good job getting our students ready to write the short essays that are needed for the Kid's Talk Radio Broadcasts in science, social studies, mathematics, sports news, local news, and world current events. Essay Express provides between 4 to 6 hours of useful self-paced instruction. The programs high motivational design increases student's time on task and more importantly students stick with the program. This allows Kid's Talk Radio teachers to work with other students that need valuable teacher time for story editing. FableVision's research-based and instructionally sound learning solutions help the Kid's Talk Radio teachers to reach out to more students. There products are like having an extra teacher in a box that you can use to individualize instruction.

A Kid's Talk Radio school tour is scheduled for September, 2007. Barboza will be visiting schools demonstrating how to build radio stations, sound effects labs and teaching students and teachers how to create special Podcasts and Z Casts Kid's Talk Radio. For more information on how to get involved, contact Bob Barboza at suprschool@aol.com, or visit www.kidstalkradiola.com.

Bob Barboza is an educator, technology evangelist, composer and software designer. He has over thirty years experience teaching students with special needs and gifted and talented students, as well as writing white papers on his findings (BrainCogs Action Research Project, 2005). Barboza is the author of Kid's Talk Radio, Jr. Business School, Jr. Law School, and Jr. Medical School. He presents information about high motivational learning programs that integrate technology and good first teaching at local and national technology and learning conferences for Super School University and the FileMaker Corporation.

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