Podcasting by Tony Vincent
March 30, 2009 by athenastan
Podcasting by Tony Vincent discusses the learning children and adults do through technology.
A few sites linked to in the article include the following:
Grammar Girl: Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing – This site talks about correct grammar, punctuation, uses, and spellings of words. It promotes good digital commenting techniques as well. I think the goal of this site is neat. Many people’s writing and language skills are suffering because of computer use. Many people use incorrect spellings and abbreviations for words and phrases. This site advocates doing things the traditional way, and teaches children how to do so.
English Idioms and Slang: Cool Lessons for Learners of English - This site dispels some of the ambiguity and confusion that could so easily be associated with English idioms and slang. For example, often times we use terms like “chicken” or “scairdy cat” to describe someone who is afraid. An English language learner, however, may take such classifications as literal. We use idioms and slang with native English-speaking students because such terms are easy for them to associate and understand. However, they could make things very confusing for an non-native English-speaker. This would be a great site to use with ESL or ELL students.
Tony Vincent also describes PodCasts in his article. He defines a podcast as a “…news feed (known as RSS) that allows it to be podcast in various podcasting directories like iTunes and Podcast Pickle.” Podcasts can be programmed to automatically download directly onto your computer. There are 3 types of podcasts, Audio (mp3), Enhanced (images/audio), and video.
Tony Vincent also includes a link to iPod activities for educational use. IPods are extremely popular, with several students owning their own iPods. Upon clicking either the “iPod touch” or “iPod with wheeles” icon, lesson plans, audio, video, RSS feeds, quizzes, web-aps, and much more are presented. Most students are eager to use technology already, so why not incorporate it into the classroom? This is a great excuse to get students interested in doing other “productive” things with the “fun” tools they might already have at home. Wouldn’t it be nice if, rather than banning iPods in schools, we made them a mandatory learning tool?
This was an interesting article that got me thinking about technology and education a bit more.
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