Podcasting and Education

After the creation of Blog and Photoblog tools to express thoughts and ideas on the global network, Internet users had a tool called "podcasting" . In fact, podcasting is a sound system unlike blog publishing tool that is written or photoblog that is visually published.

Countless universities, colleges and K-12 classes worldwide are using podcasting technology to bring the benefits of this technology  to classrooms. Podcasting has taken education by storm and the technology can not be ignored. Instructors use this tool to deliver recorded lectures, news and information to students.Thousands of all-age pupils and teachers are catching on, producing podcasts ranging from children's stories, audio diaries, plays, interviews, news and reviews. Some teachers are even using them to distribute exam revision material.

Podcasting brings more student engagement and interest in class discussions, field research and independent projects. Students also can keep up with the material when they are recorded. This reminds me of Gardner's multiple intelligences theory and the notion that individuals have different learning styles. I myself like viewing, watching and listening to lesson lectures than just reading textbooks. As if I am absorbing the information with all my five senses. Moreover, it has been seen that students show more enthusiasm especially when they are invloved in the project and thus a better evaluation results both from students and instructors.

Podcasting is transforming school life for forward-thinking schools, stimulating creative learning and new ways of communicating, says George Cole. When it comes to the length of your podcast, short is better. Recording good-quality audio in a school can be difficult! But remember: it's not difficult to create a podcast; you don't need lots of expensive kit, and kids love it."

 

Resources:

http://poducateme.com/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2007/sep/18/link.link16

Podcasting, Web 2.0 and other means of Scaffolding

Scaffolding examples are simplifying language and format, visuals and graphics, manipulatives, providing choices, cooperative learning, modeling and native language support and they are useful techniques to make content more accessible for students. As a parent and a teacher, I like Modeling, coaching and fading away the best. Though slowed speech, pauses, and speaking in phrases, providing correct pronunciation by repeating student responses and paraphrasing (Echevarria et. al., 2008) are all very efficient ways too. I like modeling not only in providing exemplars for past classes, analogies and or modeling reading, writing and note-taking strategies; but in the more general yet specific technique. Scaffolding in this way is presenting the lesson while modeling it from a students’ perspective. The instructor challenges herself with the same trial and errors that a student might face when solving the problem.

With Modeling, Coaching and fading away comes higher thinking skills. Thinking and/or the language of thinking is the mental process where words are used to describe and or evoke thought. To do so causes learning to happen as it draws on one's own interests, prior knowledge, and experiences in order to make the mental process happen. Effective learners actively take charge of their own learning by doing so. (Tishman Sh., Prekins D.N, Jay E. 1995)

The importance that other forms of scaffolding like multi- and hyper-media, podcasting, vodcasting, and other Web 2.0 tools have towards education is also great. Both allow teachers as well as students to create a variety of different presentations. Furthermore, it gives students the opportunity to learn by doing. Through active participation students stay focused and engaged in their own learning. (Norton P. & Sprague D. 2001 p.187-215)

Students are able to collaborate on projects and activities that allow them to interact with and think critically about what they are learning.

There is a learning model built into the design process that addresses internal and external concepts. Higher order thinking skills come into play. It also accommodates nonlinear exploration of information and students learn when they are actively involved in their own learning.

Podcasting

It didn't work out the way we expected. It is always like that. You'd better have a back up plan before setting all your eggs in one basket.
School computers have limitations you never know of. A task you would be thinking it could take not more than three hours, it will take a week and you are still on recording and re-recording. First, the software doesn't get installed because you don't have the administration privileges to do so. Then there are music download and contrary to what you are thinking, it won't download for the same reason.
Students are pretty excited though. They have read their news articles, summarized, written their questions and answers and have rehearsed their lines for news reporting on radio.
Finally it comes time for recording and it is not as easy as the one you did in your own class. Sometimes kids are better at tech tools than adult students. They just grab the How Tos  in a blink of an eye.But with adult learners, there comes all the steps to be taught. It can be simply from showing them how to use a mouse and right click to all the way through managing how to work with Audacity!
In a word, things can be difficult when it comes to integrating teaching with technology :)

Who is learning how to podcast?

It has been a while I'm thinking how educators bring kids to higher technology competency level, or is it that students bring their instructors to their level.

Last week, for the first time in my life, I heard a podcast and learned about its implication on education. I learned how to record on Audacity and how to work all the way to create a podcast. We also listened to sample podcasts from 3rd graders and their collaborative work on producing one, five years ago. With technology, things go fast. What you learn today on computer and its implementation might only work for a few years unless you update yourself every single day.

When I see kids of different ages playing with their iphones, ipods, video games, nintendos, wiis, smart phones, ipads, computers and more so easily and even sometimes without reading the texts of How tos, I'm surprised how fast everything is going and How I can keep up with this speed. More importantly How I can keep my students in class entertained as well as educated. I would just imagin myself, lecturing kids from textbooks while they are reading from their kindles and asking them to write down multiplication tables on paper, while they are doing it on their smart phones. Moreover, they are a multitasking generation, and thus they might be doing ten other things at the same time, listening to their podcasts can be just one of them.
It just worries me that by the time, I get the hold of these strategies in my classrooms, there would defintely be ten more updated technology tools, that I don't know of and I am sure, my students have already mastered them!

Who is really teaching who? Podcasting is just one example of tech tools that I didn't know of and I learned it last week. What about all the other tools?

Wikis piece of cookies

I have been impressed by the power of wikis and what useful tools they can be both for teachers collaboration work and also students creating and encoding.
I also know by one of the earlier instructors in our site that, " We can develop a wiki that will serve as a teacher website in which teachers can find program information, necessary forms,and professional development information, as well as websites and other instructional materials that may be helpful in their practice." We can also collect students' published works, newsletters, their journals as well as their collaborating, sharing and resources.

As I said in my earlier post, I did asked my students to start their Blogs and they are already doing amazing jobs. I just can't wait to see how everything goes on their class wikis.

What I have in mind, is keeping everything simple. Having a basic template and making the navigation through pages as easy as possible. I want them to be creating more content rather than getting stuck on the look and feel of the page. I am also going to create one main wiki for class, asking students to do the publishing process while we are in class, so everyone has an idea of where things are.

More importantly, I think , we need to come up with the goals and objectives of our class publishing a wiki. So, a rubric might be a good idea or scaffolding thoughts can also help.

What ARE some objectives of developing a wiki for an ESOL class?!!

Blogging

I think I have been a blogger off and on for a long long long time. The firt time I ever started was back, yes, back in 1999. I was down, depressed and didn't want to talk to anyone. So, I started writing, posting, and anything that made my thinking free.It felt very good. As if I had my own world, that I could write anything about anyone and all about my feelings. All about me. Then I moved on more with my experiences in China and the storeis there. My travels, Chinese cuisine and receipes, and ofcourse, my students. .http://naslebaran.persianblog.ir

The first time we started blogging with my students was when SARS was epidemic in China and schools as well as Colleges were all closed. So we started having our first virtual class with Class blog and it did worked.
Later on, many of my students started having their own blogs and writing and well, yes, complaining about .... http://icb.cau.edu.cn/intor_oratione.htm
It's been a long time now, on my personal blog, I write about my family and especially about my son. Though time doesn't allow me to write as often as I did before but I try to keep posting and guess what, my son can read now and he also has his own blog. He comes to computer and starts writing in his own words, what he think of.http://tiyamestaki.blogspot.com
We did also some blogging with my last ESOL class in 2006 and the school administration liked it very much. It was kind of Leading and teacher leadership role, because then on, many other teachers asked for more information and we had workshops on creating and How tos of Blogs. http://pimmitschool.blogspot.com
Right now, I am having my Adult ESOL class after a long time gap, and we have started posting our lessons and journals as well as reflections on our lessons. More than that, before even I ask my students to go on commenting on peers blogs, they have started reading each other's blog and commenting to initiate more discussion and conversation on the topics.
I would say, " Way to Go Class!"
If you got the time, have a look. These are just a handful of my students' blog. I love this group. They are very creative and have the potentials that they don't even know of it. I did tell my students that higher authorities are going to read your blogs :) and leave comments, so Pls, leave a comment for them, if you got the time. Thank you
http://parkbi2010.blogspot.com
http://hannapimmit.blogspot.com
http://yun-pimmit.blogspot.com
http://pimmit.blogspot.com
http://larisaschoolife.blogspot.com

Building a Classroom Management System - Creating Environment

We all have heard students being bored in class, not listening or paying attention and even ridiculing teachers. Many of us have seen movies when a teacher enters a dreadful classroom and turns it into a success. She or he is not any type of a teacher. They are The Teachers. Teachers who are not only teaching but leading their classrooms. They are the one with leadership roles.

Cushman, an education journalist working in conjunction with the nonprofit organization What Kids Can Do, extensively interviewed high school students in several urban areas about every aspect of school, producing this compendium of their advice here. In her book Crushman, tells every educator how to lead one’s classroom and how to manage students to have a better learning environment. The fact is that students, and yes, all students do want to learn. If only teachers can get students to trust and believe in them, and learn how to judge their behavior and also know what to do when things go wrong, everything will be definitely in a good shape and there won’t be any banging, nagging or fires in the bathrooms. I myself have always been scared facing high school students in the US, though I have had quite many years of experience teaching in other countries. But I keep telling myself, with a stable and efficient management and leadership role, I can put things right, and it has been true so.

Dr. Jones has also developed research-based methods of group management that are extremely cost-effective – that free the teacher to focus on instruction rather than discipline. Advanced skills of classroom management can produce dramatic increases in student learning while reducing teacher stress. Apart from all the examples and structures that Dr. Jones give teachers for classroom management, like turning passivity into activity, turning wasting time into learning time and meaning business, I would also like to add a few other intentional designs in teachings where it can also be referred to Day One of teachers’ classes.

Daniel Pink in his book of “A Whole New Mind” talks about MOPEDS, where he encourages teachers using techniques such as Bringing Meaning to classrooms, Creating symphony and Orchestra, Playing, Empathy, Designing and Story telling.

One of the most efficient ways I start my class with not only on Day One but also on other days is telling Stories and challenging their attentions. Humans almost always listen to stories better than lecture and speeches. So on Day One I start by telling stories about my own life experiences or things happening around in the news, getting to know them, and getting them to know me indirectly. This I believe is a very helpful ice-breaker, and initiates teacher and student bounding. I also usually start my lessons by announcing an authentic problem thus giving Meaning to the lesson I am teaching. This makes them think and challenges their critical thinking skills. They won’t be learning just because they are at school and that they need to learn, but, that they need to learn it for their own. I also usually ask them to see the big picture when teaching them a subject, thus creating a harmony between their books and the world around them.

No matter, if one has students with IEP/504 plans or general students, they can always coordinate classrooms with the help of the counselors or guidance to have a practical classroom. Being prepared and having one’s lesson plan designed well ahead of time can save a lot of time in future lesson planning as well as managing the classroom. Working closely with other team members and being well aware of rules and regulations as well, help all educators to be better classroom managers as well as teachers.

When students can trust their teacher, have humor and fun while learning, and see thing outside the box; they won’t be bored and they wouldn’t start fires in the bathrooms! That’s how a classroom teacher and leader should act!



References:

• Cushman, K. (2003). Fires in the Bathroom: Advice for Teachers from High School Students. New York: The New Press.

• Jones, F. (2007). Tools for Teaching (2nd ed.). Santa Cruz, CA: Fredric H. Jones & Associates, Inc.

• http://www.urbanedjournal.org/reviews/breview0021.pdf

• A Whole New Mind, Daniel Pink, New York Times Best Seller, 2006