Blog Post #4

Why Podcast? How do we do a podcast?

Not knowing much about Podcasts, I was glad that this assignment came up and it gave me an opportunity to learn. For my choices to read and summarize, I chose Podcasting with First Grade, The Benefits of Podcasting in the Classroom and Judy Scharf Podcast Collection. The resource that I enjoyed most was Podcasting with First Grade. In this podcast, a teacher took a group of first graders and read "Vacation under the Volcano" to them and then prepared a podcast. She had the children portray an interviewer, Jack or Annie (characters from the book). One of the most surprising and exciting things about this project was how involved the children got in this process. Students wanted to help out with editing and when they didn't like their voice portrayals they wanted to rerecord them. Various skills were learned from this process with some being listening, comprehension and technology. My second choice for resource was The Benefits of Podcasting in the Classroom which was more of a vodcast in telling of the benefits in podcasting. The video explained that podcasting can be used as an effective way of interacting with students outside of the classroom as well as in the classroom. If a teacher regularly podcasts their lectures and a student is out sick, the student can pull up the podcast and get all the information that they need. Podcasts can also be uploaded to blogs and websites so parents can also keep track of what their kids are learning or other teachers can get additional information to teach in their classrooms. Lastly I researched, Judy Scharf Podcast Collection website and found a lot of useful information. The website listed the benefits and advantages to using podcasting. Some of the benefits are the enhancement to students communicative skills, auditory learners like the podcasts and it's a portable learner. You can pull up a podcast anywhere and listen or learn about anywhere in the world via a podcast. One of the most beneficial items of this post was the step by step instructions that were given on creating a podcast.