Blog Post #4

Langwitches' Blog post Flat Stanley Podcast is about a first grade class who read the book Flat Stanley by Jim Brown. The class brainstormed with their teacher, and they came up with a story line for their audio segment. They would be flattened by the smartboard and sent in an envelope all around the world. The students picked a book, did research on the location of their choice, and created a script for the audio recording. The teacher reminded the students and their parents that this is an audio recording, so the children need to think about the senses and sound effects they can use to help portray the mood: How did it feel to be mailed? How did it sound and smell at the places. What did they see?

After listening to this adorable podcast made by the first grade students, I now get a sense of what it is like to make a podcast. The children expressed a sense of excitement in their voice while reading their segment in the audio recording. The change in their voices and the sound effects helped the listener know what was happening in the audio segment.

I will definitely use sound effects and change the tone of my voice when completing my podcast assignment.

Langwitches' Blog post Listening-Comprehension-Podcasting is about a group of students who are studying the story of Purim. The teachers decided to record the story as a podcast for the parents of the students. The students all recorded sentences from the story out of order. Then the students listened to the clips over and over again and put them in order. They said the sentences in English as well as Hebrew, so they would learn the Hebrew words. The children had fun while listening to their recorded clips. Listening to vocabulary words is a great way to learn the words of a different language.

After reading and listening to this post, I now realize the value of podcasting for children. The students learned the sounds of the Hebrew words when doing this exercise of recording the story of Purim. The children also showed off their creativity with their parents, which will motivate them to be more imaginative and resourceful.

Langwitches' Blog post Podcasting with First Grade is about a class of first graders who were reading Vacation under the Volcano by Mary Pope Osborne which is from the Magic Tree House Series.

The podcast the class created was an interview with the two main characters of the book. The students had a great time recording all of the different segments. Even shy students who did not talk much, came out of their shell and talked in the podcast. After editing and adding sound effects, the students were really eager to hear the audio recording the next day.

What did the students learn from this lesson? They learned many skills such as:

• listening
• speaking
• presenting
• comprehension
• storytelling
• performance
• voice acting
• oral fluency
• media
• technology

This blog post showed me that students can learn many skills from podcasting. I never realized how out of date some of the classrooms are that I have seen lately. I can not wait to have a classroom of my own, and use technology to its fullest to get students involved with collaborating and communicating with one another.