Encountering E-Learning Education

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dynamic-technology.mp3

This is another podcast I created using GarageBand. It involves my reflections on teaching using technology in a dynamic way.

I hope this challenges you to really consider how you teach students using technology.

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blogging-a-bigger-picture.mp3

This is a podcast I created as a summary of my thoughts on blogging. Enjoy!

This blog posting is a reflection on Michelle’s discussion entitled “Podcasting, Languages & ESL Students”.  Michelle highlighted the immense advantages of podcasting in assisting learning for ESL students. She illustrated how podcasting can be used for students as designers in creating their own original work, but additionally can be used as a medium for ESL learning. This is notion of teaching English as a second language through podcasting is already being utilised within the educational sphere. Marc Prensky states that “new technologies have strong potential uses in education” particularly for “language teachers who make podcasts for their students”. Prensky describes podcasting as “the technology of creating audio or video files” which are then distributed across the internet.

I found this article recommended by Michelle particularly insightful and helpful in re-evaluating the role of technology in primary education. Prensky powerfully detailed how “students are learning, adopting and using technology” at a rapid pace which requires teachers to embrace the technological world. The key to adapting to this ever-evolving teaching medium is to carefully consider “strategies for teaching with technology that can make both students and teachers comfortable while allowing students to go as far as they can with these technologies.” He states that for students these technologies “characterise their age and that they love to use, and that prepare them for the twenty-first century future as well”.  

I found it particularly helpful the way Prensky perceives new technologies for education as arriving and changing too fast for teachers to expect to master. Therefore, rather than seeking to master new technologies educators should become learners alongside their students. I found it quite liberating to realise that instead of wasting limited teaching time to become technologically proficient, teachers should let students do this. This frees teachers to help students apply technologies wisely to real problems and to reflect and search for the deeper issues that the technologies raise. Prensky also evaluates Wikipedia, podcasting, instant messaging and mobile phone cameras with this educational perspective. He concludes the article by saying:

“To use the twenty-first century’s rapidly emerging technology effectively for education, we must invent best practices together. In an era whose often unbelievable technological changes we are struggling with, the mantra – for both educators and students must be this: We are all learners. We are all teachers.

Prensky, M. (2007). Emerging Technolgies for Learning. Coventry: British Educational Communcations and Technology Agency. Available from: http://eit159.googlepages.com/emerging_technologies_prensky.pdf 

my-greatest-passion-script.docmy-greatest-passion-script.docemmaskiing.mp3

This was a class activity on the second day of our e-learning summer subject. We used Garagebandto create our own podcast and then exported it as an MP3 to upload to our edublog. The topics we were given to create the podcast were “My greatest passion” or “My wildest dream”. I selected “My greatest passion” and chose to write about skiing. A key factor in selecting this topic was the way I felt I could describe the topic in an engaging and interesting way using lots of descriptions of the snow. I endeavoured to use the podcast to create vivid images and pictures of the snow in my listeners mind, through use of sound. Matthew informed us that Garageband was designed for Mac computers but that we could download Audacityfor free from the internet and this software is compatible with PC computers. This was particularly useful to know as it would allow me to use casting in the classroom in future teaching days.

I found Garageband quite user-friendly as well as being very fun and interesting to play around with. The ducking tool was particularly useful, however I ended up overriding it in order to have greater control over the sound. I wanted the orchestral music behind my speech to rise and fall depending on the mood, which required manipulating the sound manually. There were many features I wish to further explore for my LAMs learning sequence such as changing the voice tone and using further sound affects. I did insert a picture of a snowflake into my podcast which would appear as an iTunes file. However, because I exported as a MP3 so I could use it in my edublog it was lost. We also learnt how to use bluetooth to send the file to our mobile phones. We discussed how this is a particularly powerful tool as it creates a vast audience for students to share their work with in a teaching context. It would give students great ownership and deep sharability to have their own podcast on their mobile phone or iPod to share with their friends and family.