Over the past several weeks, I have enjoyed listening to my classmates present on a variety of technological tools. The main focus of these presentations has been the potential for using these tools in a classroom setting, and it has been really interesting to hear everyone's ideas for using them in different content areas. The presentation that I found to be the most intriguing was the one about podcasting. I'm sure that part of the intrigue was due to the creative, engaging presentation (shout out to SB, RB, MB, and GP), but I will definitely give some credit to the tool itself.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I am quite possibly the opposite of tech savvy. I don't like to try new technology. I may even be afraid of it. However, it seems that this class is determined to make me face my fears time and again. For the most part, this has turned out well, and my mind is slowly opening to the idea of using more technology in my own classroom some day. As a future math teacher, I often struggle to think of meaningful, worthwhile tools to use in a math classroom. The ideas that my fellow math majors and I come up with feel forced a lot of the time, and I don't support the use of technology for technology's sake. I have to be honest, though. I really want to find a way to use podcasting in my math classroom.
What I really liked about the tool, (I believe my classmates used Garage Band in their presentation), was the relative ease of use and the ability to create rather sophisticated sounding products without using complicated equipment or becoming some kind of an expert. I walked away from the presentation feeling confident that I could do what my classmates had done (and they made some pretty nifty podcasts), which is not typical of me at all. The sound effects, the background tracks, the layering of different voices, it was just plain cool, and I think that students would really enjoy listening to podcasts and creating their own.
One of the ideas that the other math majors and I came up with for using podcasting in a math classroom is to have students listen to podcasts that are already out there about seeing and using math in the real world. In my brief experience as a student teacher, I have already been asked by my students multiple times about when they will really "need to use this stuff." This could be one way to answer that question. Another idea that we had was for students to create their own podcasts in small groups. They could explain a new concept knowing that their podcast would be used to introduce that concept to every section of their subject (e.g., Algebra 1). One problem with this idea is that math is a very visual subject, so it might be difficult to explain a concept only using audio. To help us with this roadblock, one of the presenters told us about vodcasting, which is basically podcasting with a visual element added in. This is something that I definitely want to explore because I see a lot of potential for getting students excited about learning a new concept and explaining it to their peers through vodcasting.
I totally agree with you that the podcasting presentation was great! It got me thinking about new ways to try to include this tool in my own teaching. And it might have been the first time that I walked out of a presentation truely comfortable with using the tool. I mean really, could making an awesome podcast be as easy as they made it look?
ReplyDeleteHowever I actually struggled to come up with a viable reason to use it in a science classroom, and most of the ideas that we came up with in class seemed forced. I hope that I come across something though, because it does seem like a great tool.