RICHARDSON Ch. 8. Podcasting, Video and Screencasting, Live Streaming: Multimedia Publishing for the Masses
BLACKBOARD - McQuillan, J. (2006). iPods in Education: The Potential for Language Acquisition
BLACKBOARD – Stansbury, M. (2009). iPods help ESL Students Achieve Success. eSchool News (May 11).
Do you have an iPod or another type of .mp3 player? If so, have you used it for anything other than listening to your own music, such as downloading and listening to podcasts? Note some of the points McQuillan made about how podcasting can support second language learning. Which of the ideas from the readings would you be interested in trying out in your own classroom?
I don’t have an iPod or other type of mp3 player nor have I ever used one. I viewed iPods as gadgets, something one can easily do without. Now, I’m not running out to purchase one, but perhaps I view them in a different light. I am a bit intrigued after reading McQuillan’s article and would love to try one out.
McQuillan cites a lot of SLA research to support the use and benefits of iPod technology. I like the opportunity iPods provide for comprehensible input that’s portable. The capability of added linguistic support through text, pictures, and video is helpful, especially for independent study. It is easy to see the benefits for increasing comprehension. It gets a bit technical for me when considering recording features for creating video skits and such. Although I don’t doubt this can be an effective and creative teaching strategy, I need to get more comfortable with the technology to fully appreciate it. Perhaps an easy way to get acquainted with using this in the classroom would be through listening to podcasts and audio books. The examples given on podcasts created for ESL students, which incorporate features such as slowed speech rate and dialogue discussions definitely seem a good place to start. Once I become more familiar with listening to podcasts, I might try out the idea of creating an “audio penpals” program as a language exchange between two distant classrooms. One use I found really ingenious was Stansbury’s description of students using a voice recorder with their iPod during a museum field trip to create a podcast of their visit.
Maastricht aka Mestreech
Maastricht a.k.a Mestreech, "the oldest city in the Netherlands".
The concept of the audio penpal was pretty intriguing. There are so many ways to communicate over great distances and for free, it's kind of overwhelming. The market is being flooded by free software and expensive hardware. The sheer amount and irrelevance of most material published worries me. I'm tired.
ReplyDeleteDiana, like you I don’t have those ‘gadgets’ either. Personally I don’t have a need for them, but again like you, the readings opened my eyes to their applicability in the language learning arena. I agree with your comments about McQuillan’s article, particularly the portability of iPods. That learners can practice and improve their second language acquisition anywhere, anytime, with an iPod is an amazing learning concept. The slowed speech rate you mention would benefit beginners. I think many of us were “wowed” by Poli’s students’ use of iPods to record their museum trip thoughts. Until reading these articles I never thought of iPods, podcasting, etc. as language learning tools. Good stuff!
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