Tuesday 31 July 2012

Reading 6: Comments

I love when teachers use new technology to create excitement in their classroom while teaching skills that have been important for decades. Oral communication is not new to the classroom, teachers have been asking students to give oral presentations in front of the class for a long time, but giving it a twist by asking students to create podcasts might bring a new sense of excitement. I really like the author's point about creating an authentic purpose for learning- creating your own content rather than just consuming it. Giving the students the goal of creating this podcast that potentially people from around the world could listen to.

I was thinking of some applications of podcasting and Concour d'art oratoire came to mind right away. As most french immersion and francophone students will remember presenting concour d'art oratoire was a yearly struggle. Having the students create a podcast of their concour would allow them to listen to themselves, share their concour and maybe alleviate some of the fear of presenting in front of the class (I would still want students to practice speaking in front of the class but they would have the podcast that they created that was perfect and edited to feel confident about) I would also love to listen to some of the concours that I have heard in the past but which have been lost to memory.

Another great thing about podcasting is that it is giving students a skill: story telling. A real life applicable skill that might follow students their whole lives, maybe students will have an interest in broadcasting, in entertainment, politics etc because of their experience creating podcasts. Being confident in oral presentations is a fantastic skill to pick up as a young student. I also really love that it is a project that parents can really engage with, they can listen to their child's podcast and feel like they are engaged in their child's learning. Anytime you can get parents more involved in their child's learning it is a great thing.

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