Blog Post #4

Langwitches - Podcasting with 1st Grade
Silvia Tolisano and her 1st grade class made a podcast about a book called Vacation under the Volcano. They treated it like an interview with the two main characters of the book, Jack and Annie. The boys played Jack and the girls played Annie. All of the kids rotated turns talking in the podcast. During class, she would bring kids to the back of the room or in the hallway to record. As a class, the students put together a script and read from it. Although, after the kids heard that their voices didn't sound natural, they agreed not to read off of the script anymore. All of the kids were really excited about  recording and hearing their voices, including the shyer students. The skills that were being taught were: Listening, Speaking, Presenting, Comprehension, Storytelling, Performance, Voice acting, Oral fluency, Media, and Technology.
The student's did an amazing job on this podcast. You could tell by listening to it, that they were really trying to sound professional and that they were having a good time. Using a podcast in a classroom can bring out the best in students. They don't really feel like it's work when it's fun. Also, they were able to share their accomplishment with the world! People from all over have listened to and commented on their podcast. This is a very valuable tool to use in the classroom. As a PE teacher, I'm still not 100% sure why I would need to use one, but I'm glad that I'm learning about them just in case. 

Listening-Comprehension-Podcasting
In this post, Ms. Tolisano's 2nd grade students were learning how to speak Hebrew fluently by using Garageband, Smartboards and podcast. The students were working on putting together the story of Purim. Each student would record a sentence from the script. Once all of the sentences were recorded, they downloaded them into Garageband. From there, the computer was hooked up to the Smartboard so that the students could use their hands to move the sentences into the correct place. At the end, the students had a complete story that they had put together themselves. 
This is a great tool for ELL's because the student's can actually see and hear the words that they are trying to learn. It's also a great tool for student's that are learning a foreign language. Being able to hear how a word is use and what it sounds like, can greatly help student's who are struggling with language. 

Judy Scharf Podcast Collection
Ms. Scharf has created a post that explains everything that you need to know about podcast. She gives step by step instructions for teachers who want to start podcasting with their students. There is a list of tips to think about before starting, such as, learning as much as you can about the software that you are going to use before the students start the project. She has also included an agenda that teachers should follow in order to have a successful podcast. Other resources include: podcast topics, research suggestions, instructions for using Podbean and iTunes, a grading sheet and rubric, and several example podcast.
This is a very good resource for teachers who want to podcast with their class. The instructions are clear and concise. It's practically idiot proof. I appreciate that she took the time to make this post for struggling teachers.