Sunday, September 23, 2012

Blog Assignment #4

Podcasting

I visited Ms. Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano's blog, Langwitches and was so impressed. This blog is so fun and interesting. I chose to read about and listen to Podcasting With First Grade and the Flat Stanley Podcast. I enjoyed this podcast so much! I chose this because I was familiar with the story and thought it was so fun. Ms Tolisano's class had recently read the book Flat Stanley by Jim Brown. In this story, Stanley is accidentally flattened and then goes on an adventure through the mail. In Ms Tolisano's class' story, they become flattened by the smart board in their classroom and ask their teacher to mail them around the world. It was so fun to hear each student contribute to the podcast. My favorites were the girl who went to Alabama and the girl who went to London. They were all so expressive and believable! This project really inspired me. This would be such a fun project to do with any class. It is fun for small children, but it would also be a great way to get older students interested in subjects like History, Science and foreign languages. I think this project would really foster creativity in those areas.


In Mr. Joe Dale's video Podcasting in The Classroom, he discusses the benefits of podcasting for students. I love the idea of all lectures and class sessions being made available through a class podcast. This enables students to stay caught up when they are absent. This approach really takes the pressure off of teachers, students, and parents. With podcasting, parents wouldn't have to worry so much about their child falling behind in class and suffering a poor grade because of it. This would also be useful for students when preparing for tests. It is hard for elementary school students to take notes so being able to listen to the lectures over again would be wonderful. In this way, parents would also be able to stay involved in their children's education by listening along.
I thought it was awesome to hear some of the students talk about how podcasting and project based learning keeps them interested in school work and how one girl listens to her class podcasts in the car with her parents. Of course an obvious perk to this method is that it encourages children at an early age to self teach, work well with their peers, and be responsible for their own assignments.


At my church their are many families with babies and small children, so they provide a podcast of each week's sermon on the church website. Because of this, anyone who isn't able to make it to the service can still be involved and keep their families involved. I have used the church podcast myself so I know how beneficial it is.

5 comments:

  1. Hi Meghan!
    I really enjoyed reading your post. We had similar ideas about the positive affect podcasting can have in the classroom. Your post is well organized, includes pictures and links, and is clear and concise. The only thing I noticed is that there doesn't seem to be ALT and TITLE modifiers on your photos, and you made very few minor grammar mistakes. Overall, it's a great post. Good job!
    -L.J. (Laura) Allen

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hey Meghan!
    Wonderful post! I like the pictures that you used and I also liked your personal experiences at the end. The only thing that I noticed was your word choice. You tend to use the word "fun" a lot. Other than that, you did a really nice job.
    Meredith

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi there Meghan!
    This post that you constructed was absolutely amazing and organized well. Throughout your post there were numerous points that you stated that I certainly agree with; for example, I agree that the Flat Stanley podcast would get students interested in history, science, and foreign languages. I believe that having podcasts in classrooms would make the class more organized as a whole and make learning easier for students because it would be fun. Also, I agree that podcasts would be useful because most parents that I know with kids in school that need additional help at home in their courses have forgotten or just don’t know how to do specific assignments that are given to their kids. However, with podcasts parents could learn with their kids and better assist them with their schoolwork. In sum, this was a very interesting learning experience from viewing your post.
    Thanks, Giorgio Lymon

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks for all the positive feedback guys! Meredith, your'e right I do use fun a lot. I will work on that! Haha!

    ReplyDelete