Saturday, October 18, 2008
Podcasting in Schools
With the advancement of technology even the most novice users can create multimedia presentation. Pod cast are where images, animations, and images can be used together to create presentations. Teachers can use this technology to created interesting presentations. In addition, students in elementary, middle, and high school can use this technology to create presentations. The pictures can be obtained from the internet or from digital pictures. When students use this technology to create presentations they gain a better understanding of the information. In my opinion, having students to create presentation should be used in conjunction with pen and pencil tests. However, I realize that with a shortage of computers and because of time restraints it is unrealistic to have students complete many pod casts. In one elementary media center I visited the media specialist was teaching students how to create a pod cast of their favorite author for a writing assignment. The first thing she did was show them her presentation on her favorite author, and then she taught them how to download a photograph and book covers of their favorite author and where to download it on the schools server. She actually had the website pre selected for each students. This whole process took about 45 minutes and the presentation would be completed over several visits to the media center. It was very exciting for the students and the media specialist. Pod cast can be used in elementary, middle, and high school and can be a powerful tool to help students learn the required information.
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4 comments:
I definitely agree with you Alecia. This is an exciting tool that teachers at any grade level can use with their students. I currently teach fifth grade math and science and I am constantly thinking of ways to incorporate technology. Right now I have my students creating a PowerPoint Presentation on plant classification. This is way more fun for them than reading from the textbook, taking notes, and then completing a worksheet. I can't wait to figure out a meaningful way to incorporate podcasts with math and/or science!
I liked your idea of having a sheet with the instructions of how to create a podcast. In this way any teachers who may not be able to attend the in-service would still have the directions for creating a podcast. They could also ask your "experts" who did attend the in-service for information as well. I agree that creating a podcast with one teacher would spread the joy around to others as they saw what could be accomplished with this media. Hopefully, very busy teachers would then take the time to learn about podcasting on their own.
Your idea of using a podcast for a discussion about their favorite author is a great idea. It would be such a good change from writing a book report and will teach the students something they will be able to use in the future in other classes. It may feel as overwhelming to the student as it does to us when we are learning new technology. But often the directions are more complicated than the actual project.
This could be a project that the SLMS could collaborate on with the teachers until everyone is familiar with the process.
Alecia, I am interested in finding out more about the school media center that you visited. How were the students creating the podcasts? Were they working in small groups, was the classroom teacher helping the media specialist, did the students appear to have some prior knowledge of what they were doing.
This sounds wonderful. I would love to come up with some ideas to use with the upper elementary classes that visit our media center. After we have them trained who knows we can move on to kindergarten!! Let me know when you have this tip sheet ready.
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