Thursday, February 16, 2012

Blog Post 4

Benefits of Podcasting is the Classroom was a great video to help those who do not know exactly what Podcasting is and how it can be used in the classroom. Dough Sanders explains several great benefits of Podcasting. There are three in particular that would be a very good reason as to why I would use it in my classroom.
1. Promotes creativity and innovation
2. Students can access the higher order thinking skills in Bloom's taxonomy
3. Parents can see and hear what their children are doing at school

In Judy Scharf's Podcast Collection, she too also describes what a Podcast is. If you are still wondering what it is, it is a new method of communication allowing anyone to create audio files and post them to the Internet for others to download and listen to at any time.

I really enjoyed the ExemplaryPodcast1 found on her page. The students did a audio Podcast describing the digestive system. I could really tell that the students enjoyed making the productions by their creative approach and technology skills used in it. It was engaging for me and I'm sure that it was perceived that way from their peers. With that being said I feel that when students create the Podcast and share them with friends, it also shows peer-to-peer learning. We all know that students learn from their peers and Podcasting is another way to allow the students to do that.

Listening-Comprehension-Podcasting
This site was quite similar to the others, however, it did stress more emphasis on using Podcast to give language learners the opportunity to practice using the words and sentences. I also like the idea of using the Garageband, which is a software to create podcast. Garageband allowed the students to individually record sentences from a story out of sequence. Once it was complete, students where able to display the audio files on a Smartboard and arrange the audio files in order according to the story they read. As a former teacher, sequencing a story is an important skill to learn. Using the podcast would add a creative and fun touch to teaching the skill.

One of the most basic and powerful ways to increase student motivation to learn, write, and communicate is to makes it relevant to them. In today's students, technology is what they are familiar with. I feel that teachers need to get serious about educating today’s students with digital knowledge. It's definitely a technology resource that can be used in any classroom because the price is right, and the benefits are plentiful.
Mic and Podcast Benefits

2 comments:

  1. Thoughtful and interesting.

    Are you ready for your podcast? I look forward to listening to it.

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  2. I enjoyed reading your take on podcasting. I would have to say that I totally agree with you that,"one of the most basic and powerful ways to increase student motivation to learn, write, and communicate is to makes it relevant to them." This statement seems to encompass your feelings toward using technology in the classroom. I also agree that podcasting is an inexpensive and beneficial way to engage students in learning. Great post!

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