podcasting

This is a podcast that my friend Kennedy and I recorded together about podcasts and some ways that they can be used in the classroom. In addition to the activities we talk about in the podcast, which mostly came from an article by Dolly J. Young, podcasts can be an easily accessed learning tool for students inside and outside of the classroom.

The idea of portability really appeals to me. I know that if I had the opportunity to download all of my homework assignments and carry them with me in the car or on a walk or during the other daily activities that fill up my time, I would definitely take advantage of that opportunity. Unfortunately, I haven't found audiobooks for the novels we are reading in my Spanish classes, which would definitely be a time saver for me.

Other than that, though, none of my current classes have made use of podcasting or of audio recording in general. I think this activity could be useful for helping students become more comfortable with their ability to produce the foreign language and their ability to communicate with others in the foreign language. It is often hard for foreign language teachers to gage students' speaking abilities when the only formally assessed oral language production takes place in the form of individual interviews or class presentations, where students have environmental factors that negatively affect their production of the foreign language. The idea of having students record even a brief response to something they have read, heard, or learned about in the foreign language classroom, as a sort of audio journal, seems like something that I might be interested in including in my classroom -- not only does it incorporate a different form of communication than most graded student work, but it could be entirely portable for me, too! I think that podcasting has advantages for students as well as teachers!