Deadline Extension: NPR Student Podcast Challenge

Every morning at 10 a.m., NPR's Education Team has a daily check-in. The meeting for the past two weeks has been consumed by coronavirus stories. We've reported on how schools and colleges are searching for solutions to try and keep students safe.

Since we've been interviewing teachers and administrators about what COVID-19 means for schools, we weren't surprised to receive emails requesting extensions for the Student Podcast Challenge. Some from teachers whose schools had closed and others who said they were busy preparing their students to go online.

We firmly believe all students should get the opportunity to finish what they started, so we are extending the deadline for the Student Podcast Challenge by two weeks. The new deadline is April 7, 2020.

What does this mean?

Those who have already submitted are fine (we might have even listened already!) and please do submit early if you can. This extension will alter our judging period slightly, but we still anticipate to announce the winners by the end of April. The biggest change will be our team's timeline to go through the entries, so if you are unaffected by the coronavirus we encourage you to get your entries in on schedule.

As a reminder, here's how the NPR Student Podcast Challenge works: Put together a podcast with your class or extracurricular group. Then your teacher can submit it to us. This contest is for teachers with students between 5th and 12th grade. Each podcast should be between three and 12 minutes long. The winning podcast submissions will be featured in segments on Morning Edition or All Things Considered. Here are all the rules.

If you are still working on a podcast while learning from home here is an article about mobile apps students are using to make their podcasts. We also have a video about how to turn any space into a recording studio. Believe it or not, podcasts are recorded remotely all the time — it's more unusual for a host and a guest to be in the same studio than in different ones!

Questions? Check out our FAQs and feel free to email us at studentpodcastchallenge@npr.org

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