At the beginning of this course I HATED technology...I was sick of hearing about all the great things you could do in your classroom with it..I mean, sometimes its important to just focus on good old books, chalk and paper right?? In fact, every week, I look for the negatives of the lesson...why are blogs a waste of time? Wiki's just wont work...Podcasts are tooo complicated and pointless...And EVERY week, Janice Wins and I start to believe a little more!
After reading the UTube article I was kind of against the whole thing. I LOVE to read and I hate to see the movie of a book. I feel like the actor/location, never lives up to the scene I had painted in my mind. I feel like this kind of reading is lost on students if they always get to see the video, if they are always shown an image. When do they have a chance to exercise their imagination?
Then I read the articles about podcasting and I was hooked! Here was a purpose to technology that still incorporated old fashion learning! Using a podcast as the final product of a written piece! I loved that students were writing in order to produce the podcast, and I loved the fact that their writing would need to be concise for the sake of time and descriptive becasue their would be no visual to accompany it!
Podcasts are great tools for English Learners. Students have the oppotunity to practice their speaking for a large audience without the pressure of every eye being on them! WOW what a great way to lower the affective filter and practice this critical ELD standard!
On a totally different note, I thought the water buffalo video was a great way to show students how fortunate they really are. When they showed the farmer plowing that field by hand with no shoes, I thought living here we have no CLUE what a hard life is! I want to show my students this video just to see what they think of their lives and problems after!
O.k. Janice...one more week to WOW me!
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5 comments:
Your blog post made my day! :) I'm glad you are having some good feelings about all you are learning. Podcasting can be a fantastic tool for learning in the classroom. When students get feedback from listening to their own recordings, the learning can be incredible. I can't wait to hear some of your student productions! Please let me know how I can support you in this.
Yes I too was amazed on the video of the water buffalo. I emailed my friends about it. and about the podcast lesson this week, it was amazing. I will try to use Podcast and video streaming hopefully when we come back from x mas break.Which will allow me the time to master it. I heard they are some classes or introduction to podcast in the apple stores.
I also really liked to water buffalo video, and I hope to start showing podcasts to my classes.
I actually got hooked checking out YouTube, which I had avoided up until now. I made the mistake of doing a search for John Denver, whose music I have always loved. 30 minutes later, I realized that I had been watching videos and not working on this stuff. So I can definitely understand how easily the kids can get hooked.
I know how you can get hooked on YouTube. Here's my list of favorites. I think you'll enjoy some of them:
http://tinyurl.com/ysublm There is such amazing content out there!
Have you ever heard of Chris Crawford? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Crawford_(game_designer)
Of course not, but he is a real smart guy who designed video games and has a lot to say about interactive design. Why am I bringing that up? Because the definition of literacy is changing and we're soaking in it now. Do I like it? I'm not sure, but we can't ignore it.
Garry
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