Blog Post 4

The Benefits of Podcasting in the Classroom

I enjoyed this post very much. I think that the more advocators of podcasting in the classroom there are, the better. The video starts out by stating the fact that we will be teaching a generation that has never known a life without personal computers and other technologies. Later in the video, Kourtney Bostain states that podcasts allow students to demonstrate higher order thinking skills. I think that the most interesting part of this video was when the student had to miss class because she was running a fever, but her teacher uploaded all of his material for students to download. That is so awesome! I only wish that I had that kind of resource in high school, or even some classes in college.

1st Graders Create Their Own Read-Along Audio Book

I really enjoyed reading this post because it reminds me a lot of my little brother. He's the youngest in our family of seven kids, but he's been reprogramming all of our remotes since he was 6 years old. It's interesting to see; my dad has been a computer technician for almost thirty years, but Isaac, my brother, is the only one who knows how to work the remote! That's what this post reminds me of, not necessarily that the generation that precedes us is at all technologically inhibited, but that the next generation of students seem exponentially more inclined. A small fact got lost on me as I was reading this post and thinking, "Well, I could do that" : these students are in the FIRST GRADE! It's absolutely incredible.

Listening Comprehension

I think that this is a very important post. Silvia Tolisano repeatedly makes great points about reading comprehension and the teachability of young students. Ms. Silvia starts out her posts by quoting a somewhat surprising statistic: "In order to internalize a new vocabulary word, you have to hear it at least 70+ times... not only the sounds of the letters that make up the word, but also the context the word is embedded in." I believe her! At first I thought maybe that number was a little bit inflated, but when I really thought about it I realized that we hear new words all the time through various forms. I've never really kept track of how many times I hear a new word and it's contextual meaning, but I do want to try now. What I find even more interesting though is that the Ms. Tolisano had her students record parts of a story they had learned on Garageband and placed the parts out of order. Then, the students were to go to the Smartboard and rearrange the parts of the story so that they were in order. Simple enough, but did I mention that they told the story IN HEBREW? That's right. These students worked with the Jewish Studies teacher to learn and record their parts before having to rearrange them from start to finish. Mind blowing. I tweeted this story.