Tuesday 31 July 2012

Reading #6: Listening to Themselves: Podcasting Takes Lessons Beyond the Classroom by Maya Payne Smart

Smart introduces us to the idea of using podcasts in the classroom. She believes that student created podcasts gives students a chance to practice their oral presentation skills. My ELL students often come to class with poor speaking skills because they struggle with pronunciation or just being able to form grammatically correct sentences. Podcasting would give my students a chance to record their voices and to listen to themselves. Then they could make corrections and try to improve their speech. Of course, the teacher would need to provide some guidance and feedback, so the students could recognize their weaknesses and then work to improve them.

After reading this article, I am thinking that I may use one of the audio recording systems that we have studied in class to record conversations between students or between a student and myself. It would be useful for assessment to be able to listen to the conversation again. At this point I don't understand the difference between a program like audioboo and podcasting, but I am sure I will learn about that tomorrow.

I also like Smart's idea that students can create podcasts to summarize what they have learned in class. I think that this could be very useful for them to use these summaries as a review before a test. Students could also listen to podcasts of other students if they are absent from class. I am very intrigued and I am looking forward to learning more about podcasting tomorrow.

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