Podcasting

 I was glad to learn about podcasting, because I think it will be especially beneficial for my students who have difficulty reading.  My sixth-grade language arts students are finishing a cooperative book, and they will create a podcast to accompany the slideshow of the book.  They are very excited about being able to share their work with their friends and family online... suddenly a class project takes on a new, much more exciting dimension, and we will save paper by not making a copy of the 20 page book for each student to bring home.

I love to read aloud, and my selection of books on tape for this group is limited.  I am trying to find ways to help them read independently, and many of the texts I use (we have a subscription to Reading A-Z.com, which has great levelled non-fiction texts) do not have an audio component.  I think I will try creating a podcast for the kids to listen to as they read along.  I have noticed in the past that students who follow along in a book as it is read to them improve their own fluency and vocabulary.

Other resources I have found are also very exciting.  You've already seen my first Prezi, and I created a second one for my sixth graders on the difference between "there, their and they're."  This came together very quickly (my first attempt took 5 hours!), when I realized that the simplest way to create it was to type all the words I wanted in a list format (each line in a separate text box), then find a bunch of pictures (click and drag to desktop, then to the prezi).  Only when I had all the items on the Prezi did I start to organize them.  MUCH quicker!  The kids were fascinated, and read it aloud to themselves as they watched it.  Instead of autoplay, I let them click when they were ready to move to the next "slide."

Ted.com is a great resource for anyone who is interested in learning more about technology, science, design, and many other subjects.  Perhaps because I watched Flubber this weekend with my daughter, I found this lecture about the invention of new toys especially intriguing.  Although these lectures are fairly high-level, and probably more complex than I would use with my students this year, I imagine 8th grade - High School level teachers would find some of them very useful.

More soon!

M.