Terrific Technological Teaching Tool

           Students today don’t need to be lectured at; they need to be a part of constructing the content of what they're learning. It’s important to give them a sense of autonomy within the classroom so that they always remain interested in what they’re doing. Assigning a podcast over a paper is guaranteed to spike students’ interest and ensure their engagement while giving them some freedom to represent their learning in their own way.

            
          Creating a podcast allows students to share their knowledge and their learning experiences. Students today are surrounded by technology and we can teach them that they don’t have to be passive consumers of media, but that they can produce their own. One benefit to podcasting is that students get to see their work out there; they can share it with the world rather than just their class. Their audience is much larger which may make their work more meaningful to them. Knowing that they are responsible for putting new knowledge out into the world might give them the drive and motivation to edit and perfect their work more so than if they were simply sharing with their teacher or their classmates. Teachers could also use this technology to provide their students with important information recorded in class for students to review, or to provide additional material that students would be able to watch as homework (which would be much more stimulating that reading a text). Students would be able to view these podcast on their iPods or iPads while doing other things - for example, taking the bus – and this would allow students to better time manage their work.

         There are multiple ways in which I can think to incorporate podcasting into the classroom. To start, there are many situations where I think that using a podcast as a teacher will be very beneficial. For example, in a science class - to demonstrate a reaction that we may not have time to complete in class or that might not be deemed safe for an in-classroom experiment – or in a P.E. class – to demonstrate proper form before starting a unit (especially if I as a teacher am not particularly skilled at said unit). An example of where student-centered podcasting would be useful is for research projects. After having them to do research about a certain topic, have them then make a creative podcast. For instance, after researching certain pieces of art, students could create an unofficial audio guide to a faux art museum where these pieces of art are on display. These are just a few examples of the many ways in which podcasts can be utilized in the classroom. The flexibility of this technology makes it an extremely valuable educational tool.