I was impressed with the mp3-making abilities of aviary, a photo and sound editor. One of our main tasks for today involved creating a podcast commercial for one of the edubloggers we are following. I discussed the Educational Technology Guy blog. I knew sources such as GarageBand allowed users to create mp3s that integrated music with their own voice, but I did not know there was a free resource online! I had a lot of fun selecting introduction and ending music for my short podcast (though I think K is absolutely right in suggesting that students should always record their content first and add fancy stuff later!). I was pretty proud of my result. I later checked out some of the PSAs of my fellow STEM teachers-in-training and learned about some neat resources that way.
I could potentially see myself using podcasting as a tool in classrooms. I do think it could be a handy way to get students audio notes of a lecture or activity. I also think it could be incorporated into a student project like this one.
The second half of the class, we talked about the relation of decoding this to school. The most important take-away for me personally was that it is important to remember that students can get frustrated. I was getting a little frustrated doing a decoding task and if it had been much longer probably would have gotten downright cranky. This is actually a really important reminder to me. As a physics teacher, I will be enthusiastic about the material and about the possibilities for students to engage with new material. But for some of them, physics will be a frustrating task of decoding and learning that will give them a headache. I have to remember that students are first of all people, and people can have emotional responses to learning environments.
I love that your blog style has developed in a way that it captures the major take away ideas for you, but has been turned into a resource for you reference the tools for later. Crafty work. I should probably shift from making it mostly just a resource to a similar style.
ReplyDeleteThanks, by the way, for telling me about your "hole in one" geometry homework. The influence it had on me almost had me include a melded idea into my public comment. I had to cut out some of the details to make it one page, so unfortunately it did not make the cut, but it made it into my back pack of ideas to build lesson plans. Thanks!
I believe we can easily relate the decoding activity to math and physics. Mathematical language that makes the majority of mathematical and physical theory is a language all itself. I think as a teacher we should be aware that our students our learners in mathematical literacy, still trying to decode themes and messages from the algebraic equations.
ReplyDeleteI appreciate the ways in which you suggest we can incorporate podcasting into the classroom! That's very interesting. I agree about potentially using podcasting for the classroom, I think it could be a very nice tool for students to use for creative assignments.
ReplyDeleteI also think that it is very important to realize that students have emotional responses to learning environments. That decoding exercise was great to help me see learning from their perspective, and all the emotions that come with not understanding what something is about.