Podcasts in the Classroom

Once again, the focus turns to integrating technology in the classroom!  Not that I necessarily think this is a bad thing, it’s just that I continue to be amazed with how many of our classes seem to focus on this subject.  Last week in ELA we had a class discussion on various ways to use podcasts and voice threads in the classroom.  I love podcasts, and listen to them almost every morning, but had never thought about using them as a tool in teaching by having students create their own.

After hearing about Radio WillowWeb in class, I looked them up, and listened to some of the incredible podcasts created by the Willowdale Elementary school students in Omaha, Nebraska.  In these podcasts, an older student generally acted as the host and interviewed younger students about various topics including the Olympics, President’s Day, and endangered animals.  I think kids would love to do this type of activity, especially if they knew they would build up an online audience that included their family and friends.  I also think students would take great pride in their work and research knowing they would be recorded and broadcast for the whole world to listen to.  Podcasts would also be beneficial for school and class bonding. 

I believe there are several ways in which podcasts can benefit students.  For starters, they are a great way to get shy students involved.  A shy student may not want to public speak in front of the class, but may be a great speaker and have brilliant ideas if they could speak into a microphone with only a few people around.  In the form of podcasts, students could broadcast the news, hold debates, read stories or discuss various worldly topics as the Willowdale students have.  Another amazing way in which podcasts could be used is to communicate with sick or injured classmates.  For example, if a student was diagnosed with cancer and was undergoing treatment in Vancouver, how amazing would it be to have their classmates send their well-wishes or read stories on podcasts that the sick child could listen to?

There are many benefits to using podcasts in the classroom, and I look forward to exploring them when I become a teacher.

ABC's and IRP's

Now that I’ve completed my first month of classes, I feel like I am really beginning to grasp what teaching is all about.  I visited a middle school with my seminar class earlier this week, and we have begun making lesson plans in several of our classes.  I had never heard of the Integrated Resource Package (IRP) a month ago, but now I have read over several of them and can see what a valuable resource they will be for me as a teacher when it comes to planning lessons.  That being said, with the set-up of the IRP’s and the subsequent Prescribed Learning Outcomes (PLO’s) being so broad, I think they would be an even bigger benefit to the experienced teacher who has already created numerous lesson plans.  

As a new teacher I am a little apprehensive of the freedom the IRP’s give me in lesson planning and teaching.  I think it could be beneficial for beginner teachers to have the IRP’s a little more structured and detailed.  However, once I have a few years of teaching under my belt, I’m sure I will appreciate the IRP’s for what they are.  Only time will tell.  I do know that I cannot imagine NOT having an IRP or PLO to base my lesson plans around.  As a new teacher, I would be completely lost.  I look forward to exploring the IRP’s in more detail as we create more lesson plans in the coming weeks.

I expect the ELA students of today will all have strengths and weaknesses, and will learn at different paces and through different strategies.  The middle school years can be a challenging time for kids, and I think that as a teacher it’s important to remember this and to try and be understanding of individual’s needs and learning techniques.  The current IRP’s are vague, and I like that.  They allow the teacher to spend more time on certain concepts that the student’s don’t understand, yet they still list the PLO’s, so the teacher knows what his students are expected to learn by the end of the school year.  The IRP’s act as a great framework for ELA lesson planning, while still allowing the teacher freedom of choice to engage their students in unique ways of reading, writing, speaking, listening, viewing and representing.  They allow us, as Robert E. Probst says, “to find ways, as Tom Sawyer did, of luring the kids, not into painting a fence, but into serious conversations.”  That is why I think the IRP’s will be such a valuable resource.

Probst, Robert E. “Tom Sawyer, Teaching, and Talking.”