bianca

i read the observations that shalena made about the reading “How to use Podcasts at Your School”, i totally agree with her view that the opportunities that podcasting offers are endless. i think that podcasting really offers students valuable learning experiences that writing in a workbook cannot. As shalena said children can work on their listening and speaking skills without the fear of face to face confrontation. some children are not comfortable with speaking in front of the whole class and cannot perform to the best of their ability. therefor podcasting can be used as a medium for assessment as the teacher can ask children to record their answers and then assess children’s perfected recorded version. children can post personal reflections about lessons and express their feelings and actually say what they are thinking, not what they think they are suppose to say. another important point to note is that young children love to talk. they could talk before they could write, so why not embrace in knowledge that children much prefer to express in voice than written words. If you say to the class, today we are going to do some talking, naturally they will be engaged as its a task they know they can complete. Shalena ideas on the reading by Richardson can influence teachers to aim to try new things in their class. It no good teachers always doing the same old boring thing because before they know it children will become demotivated and uninterested in important units of learning. Podcasting is a simple, easy and interactive tool to use, its something that can encourage children in deep thoughtful thinking and allow children to really express themselves and have fun.

Shalenas blog post: http://shalena87.edublogs.org/2008/03/18/how-to-use-podcasts-at-your-school/

Richardson, W. (2006). . In Blogs, wikis, podcasts and other powerful web tools for classrooms. Retrieved 18th March, 2008 from http://www.techsmith.com/community/articles/schoolpodcasts.asp?DCMP=NLC-edunews30&ATT=podcast