Blog Post 4

In Integrating ICT into the MFL Classroom, teacher Henry Dell discusses many ways that integrating podcasts into the classroom can benefit students as well as teachers. The video shows a situation where a student is out sick but is able to access the days lecture by downloading the podcast and listening to it on their iPod. It also shows several students recording their own podcasts, which they seem to thoroughly enjoy.

I thought this video showed an interesting way to help students gain interest in subjects they normally may find boring. Some of the the techniques are pretty useful; however, several of them seem like they would only apply to elementary education. Personally I don't really see a way that I could incorporate many podcasts into a high school writing class. There are definitely ways to utilize videos, but not podcasts in particular.

The Langwitches Blog tells about a first grade classroom where the teacher incorporated podcasts into the curriculum and how much it benefited her students learning. She talks about how excited the students got when they were trying to perfect their podcasts. The blog also tells several other situations where teachers have used podcasts and to what degree they were successful.

Some of these ideas were really useful especially the section in which a group of students retold "The Tell-Tale Heart" in a podcast. I'm not sure I would ever use this assignment exactly, but it definitely demonstrated how much more exciting a story can be when students engage in it this way. The way the students incorporated sound effects is also something I could use in my podcast assignment.

The Curriki Blog introduces podcasts and describes what exactly they are; there are also a couple of useful links on how to create them using Audacity. The blog also gives detailed instructions of how to manage the students time when introducing them to podcasts for the first time.

I thought that a lesson plan very similar to this could be very useful for a teacher that wanted to use podcasts in the classroom. The most useful aspect of this blog; though, are the different links that thoroughly explain exactly how to create and upload podcasts to Itunes.