Kirk Bundy, a Capistrano Unified School District teacher for 11 years, asked students to apply a new idea — podcasting — to a classroom tradition: the school project.

Bundy recently received a 2006 Unsung Heroes award from finance company ING.
The company recognizes kindergarten through twelfth-grade teachers nationwide for innovative teaching methods.

Bundy, in his first year as a technology teacher at Newhart Middle School in Mission Viejo, says the $2,000 prize associated with the award will be used toward upgrading computers for his classes.

His podcast project, “To Infinity & Beyond: Researching to Podcasting Global Energy Awareness,” called on sixth- to eighth-grade students to research how and why energy plays a vital role in their lives.

Bundy says he thought a podcast was “a good way for people around the world to see how kids in California look at energy use… There’s a need to talk about it and kids don’t understand completely why it’s important to conserve energy. I think it will help them decide what vehicle they drive and how to save power at home.”

The hardest part of the podcast initiative for the students was probably “Writing up the script for the podcast, because they had to put it in their own words.”

Via the Orange County Register