Saturday, August 22, 2009

Podcasts

Are we engaging or enraging our students? Have you spoken to or taught students lately who seem to tune out (Prensky, 2005 ). According to Prensky (2005, cited in Aldred, 2009), 'these students are convinced that school is totally devoid of interest and totally irrelevant to their life'. Podcasting involves uploading a media file and an XML file to a podcasting server and allows students to download these to a product like iTunes and replay it on an MP3/4 player like an iPod (Aldred, 2009).

After finally being able to download itunes and viewing a couple of podcasts it is understandable how this technology would benefit students and teachers alike. There are so many categories to choose from and are so easy to download, I was able to download several resources which I will be eager to listen to at a later date. Who knows you may see me walking my dog with my ipod attached to my head in the near future. Of course the capabilities and benefits would allow students with learning difficulties to also benefit from this type of technology.

This technology is so influential the power of which certainly should not be misjudged especially if we want our pupils to be tuned in, engaged and willing to learn (Aldred, 2009). Keeping this in mind I would assign relevant data for students for their projects to listen to to give them ideas for further research. This data would need to be downloaded to their ipods or MP3 compatible devices, listened to for homework and a class discussion/debate would be held to gather their ideas on this data.




Reference

Prensky, M. (2005). Engage me or enrage me, What today’s learners demand “Today’s kids are not ADD, they’re E0E.” Retrieved August 23, 2009, from http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/erm0553.pdf

Aldred, S. (2009). Podcasting. Retrieved August 23, 2009, from CQUniversity moodle course, FAHE 1101 Managing E-Learning.

1 comment:

  1. Loretta,

    I would agree with you there, I think it is important for us as learning managers to not underestimate and overlook the power of podcasts and ipods.

    I think as beginning teachers, we may have to be advocates for these technologies and show teachers how useful they can be to supplement the learning process.

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