Blog Post # 4

Langwitches and Learning about Podcasts:

This is my first encounter with podcasts! I learned a lot of information going through the different links that Dr. Strange provided for the class. I thought the read along podcast was a GREAT project for first graders. It focuses on a lot of reading skills I am being taught in my EDM 330 class such as: reading like you are talking and speaking clearly; just to name a few! When I listened to "Dinosaurs Before Dark", I was very intrigued by how excited the children were when reading their lines out loud. They did a wonderful job "acting" out the words! I will definitely work on my voice for my podcast because I want people to stay interested in what I am saying. So I think the best way to do that is have a captivating voice that people want to listen too.

The next video I watched was "Podcasting with First Grade". It was so awesome that the students were so involved with the project and were respectful to others when they were not recording. I learned from this podcast that you will not always get it right the first time and that is okay! Sometimes you have to redo some lines over and over to get them just right. This is a great project to help students become more comfortable with speaking in front of a crowd. The teacher said that a lot of the quiet/shy students were coming out of their shell. I think that is a good thing for students to do. I still get a little nervous speaking in front of a group of people; so maybe this would be a good technique to start with younger children to prevent this problem.

The last information I read was Judy Scharf Podcast Collection. It was very helpful and informative! I learned where the word podcast came from; which is from "broadcast" and "iPod". It's really great that podcasts are so easy to to prepare and publish wherever. It is definitely a very convenient project to do and does require a lot of knowledge of technology. There were other videos provided from YouTube that were very informative on podcasts! She gave a lot of different ways to prepare for the podcasts. She gave different topics and a rubric so that you should know how act on a podcast. This will help me a lot for when I prepare for my podcast!   I can't wait to get started!