I listened to the Flat Stanley podcast on Langwitches. This podcast was done by a class of first graders, after they read the book Flat Stanley by Jam Brown. In the podcast, each of the children talked about their adventures as a "Flat Stanley." Although, they each had a different "flat" name, such as Flat Evan or Flat Jeremy. The children's adventures included Tokyo(Japan) , North Pole, Space, and Alabama(United States). Every child described how they got to their destination of choice and what interesting places they encountered. I must say that I was amazed by how articulate the children sounded and how much research must have been done by each of them. This is the kind of podcast that I would love to have my future students create.
This was a really interesting podcast. A classroom of 2nd year students in Elementary school read a book called Purim. Purim is written in Hebrew and yet, each child was able to speak a part in the podcast and sounded, to me, as though they spoke Hebrew fluently. Garageband was the computer program used by the students and their teacher to put the podcast together.
Each student recorded their part and when they were all done, the parts needed to be put into order. As the students put their voice parts in order, they continued to hear themselves and each other, over and over again. This was one of the key goals of the podcast. Apparently, someone will begin to really comprehend what they are hearing after they have heard a word about 70 times. I'm sure each of these kids got very near that number because they sounded like that knew exactly what they were talking about!
In Joe Dale's, The Benefits of Podcasting in the Classroom, he explains the possibility of using podcasts to minimize the amount of learning lost to sick time by children. He says that it's actually possible to provide children with podcasts of what happened in class each day. Mr. Dale also shows several examples of ways that podcasts can be used as a supplement to simply reading books in class. A principal who Mr. Dale asked about podcasting suggests that podcasts allow parents to hear a fragment of what happens in the classroom.
Hey, Eleanor!
ReplyDeleteGreat post! I could tell that you were very enthusiastic about the podcasts that you learned about! I also can't wait to implement podcasts. If you were suprised by how articulate the children sounded, and how much research seemed to be involved, just imagine their own reactions and pride in their work the students would experience. They would also be excited to share the project with their family. Podcasts really do hav a lot of advantages!
Keep up the good work!
Carly