Blog Reflection – Week of July 27th

For weeks, I have been thinking about how to incorporate podcasting effectively into my classroom. I love turning to NPR’s website and having the opportunity to replay some of my favorite podcasts, including New Horizons in Education and Car Talk, at any time of the day or night, and I often wonder whether my students of the future could ever be as interested in my own future podcasts.

From this week’s reading, I found Shawn Wheeler’s “Giving Students a Second Listen” quite encouraging. He made many interesting remarks regarding podcasting, which I think could convince many of you SMACers to give it a chance. He claimed that podcasting “would extend the learning day, change the way students review for tests and allow those students who were absent to hear the lesson” (p. 64). I believe podcasting provides many teachers to both record lectures and transfer them to accessible formats quickly and effortlessly. Once the audio clips reach the information superhighway, students could listen to them for a multitude of purposes. A student who Wheeler asked to interview other peers about the benefits of podcasting found that students utilized podcasts to “allow better understanding than reading the PowerPoint slides or worksheets” from class, provide a “second chance to hear the information due to the speed the teacher speaks or students inability to keep up while taking notes,” and to review for upcoming examinations (p. 66). The positive effects of podcasting seem endless for students, and I truly believe that podcasting will change education. Students will not be the only beneficiaries from this technological tool – oh no, teachers can also review these audio recordings to improve their teaching practices. In contrast to video records of practice, podcasting could capture audio with a fraction of the necessary space to retain the record on a personal hard drive.

Podcasting has a bright future, and I think many students could also take advantage of the hardware and software to expand their learning space. Students could work together to create an informational radio station, completely run by podcasts, or they could use it to record personal readings of their poetry or short stories. Podcasting ultimately opens the door for students to explore a new presentation format. Students in science classes could record observations in lab experiments, and world language students could utilize podcasts to practice their pronunciation.

While I a little bummed out that our new technology package is not going to include an iPod, I am optimistic about podcasting in my short future. I will find a way!

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P.s.: In recent weeks, I’ve been addressing the pitfalls of virtual social networks, and while I think youths that create alternative personas in cyberspace are in need of help and protection from their parents, this video brought a smile to my face. You country music and Seinfeld fans out there, take a couple of minutes out of your busy lives.