The Power of Podcasting

Every time I feel happy witnessing so many powerful mediums of digital media. Along with blogging and microblogging, podcasting presents another powerful e-learning tool. Podcasting is powerful and accessible,    

  it has low barriers to entry, you just need a microphone and you have to search communication to create the power.

Podcasts are helpful in motivating kids and helping them to stay focused on the course. Podcasts give the opportunity to meaningfully participate in culture and society, not just in the classroom, but in the world. Learning from podcasts shifted control over the pacing of learning activities from the teacher into their own hands. Students identified podcasts as offering choices of how they could carry out their learning activities and flexibility to organize their learning. Podcasts have also the potential of tapping into the knowledge of peers and other students as a valuable learning resource.   

It gives the students the chance to record themselves and then they are able to immediately listen to their pronunciation, intonation and grammar usage. They can also record native speakers and practice mimicking intonation and pronunciation. It is also a very useful tool for students who are too shy to speak the foreign language in front of their peers. Therefore, the above mentioned are the evidence that podcasting has a huge potential to teach students.

As kids are becoming simultaneously consumers and creators of digital media, we have to teach them skills to how effectively use and benefit from podcasting. The activities discussed in the article can be applied in the classroom environment. Teacher must raise students’ awareness about podcasting and introduce the students its functions and the steps of creating a podcast.  Students must practice it at home to become used to it. Downloading Audacity to all the computers and having the webpage or weblog up and running will ensure that the activities will work and can be implemented in EFL classroom.

Am I ready to introduce blogging to my own EFL class?'

With the help of the book chapter ’’Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms’’ and the video about weblogs in school by Will Richardson I got the chance to deepen my knowledge about such powerful web tools as blogging, wikis and podcasts. According to Will Richardson, blog is really archive of ideas, it is a place where you chronicle your learning, where people collect links and comment on it, where they share their experiences and ideas.  Blog is not simply a discussion board or a diary or a journal, it is really a place where you can be reflective, where you can do critical thinking. It is where more learning, more investigation, more conversation and more engagement happen.

The possibilities of blogging are endless. The blogs provide students with real learning opportunities to improve not only their written English but also their reading in English by reading their classmates’ blogs and responding to them. Blogs provide students and teachers with an authentic task, as blogs are common and have become a relevant and credible forum for people to express their opinions, interact around ideas and share information throughout the world. Also, blogs provide students not only with opportunities to acquire and use new vocabulary but also with new and useful computer skills. It is also interesting to learn that kids are really engaged in social networks. They are more motivated to write in front of the real audiences as the audiences are much wider than simply the teacher giving feedback in ways that are different from the four walls of the classroom. So, it definitely enhances the way that they write.

Another powerful tool is micro-blogging which brings benefits to the learning experience. Using Twitter gives the opportunity to foster a strong sense of community within and beyond the walls of the classroom and students learn, share and reflect forming a collaborative community. Twitter does not replace traditional language instruction in the classroom. It does help extend learning outside of the classroom and encourage the students to use the target language more often. Twitter can be used to help students ‘’crystallize thoughts, focus attention and make connections’’.

Learning about the benefits of blogging leaves a room for me to think about integrating blogging in EFL classroom. As a TEFL professional, my mission is to change and make a difference in school programs. 

I will definitely try to use blogs and twitter in EFL class as a collaborative board for both teachers and students. The proficiency level of learners may vary from intermediate to the advanced level. I will encourage them to reflect in more depth on themes touched upon in class using blogs. As an assignment I will give a topic and several articles to read (sometimes links to the videos to watch). Students will have to read the articles, synthesize the information and provide a reflective writing. Also, they will respond to their peers’ blog posts through comments by providing supportive feedback to each other and offering additional suggestions. Students may also upload their drafts for writing and have an online portfolio of student written work. As a teacher I will respond to student posts quickly, write a short comment related to the content or even customized forms to collect feedback.

Students can tweet their own notes during lessons and share with their peers. I will ask students to review lessons using twitter and remind students what is going to be covered in class that day or the next.  Students can use Twitter to coordinate assignments: collaborate on different projects and keep a quick reference on any changes.

One predictable challenge will be students’ demotivation due to lack of interest. The solution will be carefully selecting topics and sometimes giving them the freedom to choose the topics. Another challenge is the inappropriate feedback that students may receive from their peers. T should raise their awareness about this issue and can put a class analyze the blog post of one classmate so that they can be more involved and engaged. 

          The videos I saw today made a great impression on me, that is why I want to share my new ideas and feelings with you. I am really amazed that watching these videos will make me see things in a new way and help to understand the changes that occur in the world. Most importantly, the framework of globalization has changed a lot. Drastic changes have occurred in the last fifteen years or so - events that have leveled the global playing field.

The World is Flat 3.0, an essential update on globalization, happened at the dawn of 21st century, a period when the world shrinks from small to tiny,flattening to such a degree that individuals can collaborate and compete globally, share with others of different cultures, religions, educational backgrounds and languages. 

    Friedman talks about ten flatteners which have completely changed our world as well as our world perception- ten "flatteners": things that have enabled us to connect with the rest of the world much more easily than ever before. (Friedman) From the 10 flatteners the ones that impressed me most are second and the third ones. The second flattener (the invention of the internet browser) was the most vital one as it was like a base one which the rest 8 flatteners were built. It also gave a start to something new which later changed the whole world. The third flattener is work flow software. The advent of work flow software was a quiet revolution that no one realized was happening. Work flow software allowed more people to collaborate within and between businesses and continents, at a faster pace than ever before.

    The flattening of the world has implications for teaching and learning. Students need skills and attitudes that should be taught at school. Students need to be able to teach themselves and be prepared to constantly absorb new information and develop new skills. Mastering these skills together with passion and curiosity will enable children to be innovative, creative and successful in the flat world. The greater their curiosity and passion for learning, the greater chances they will have for success later in life.

   

It is really amazing and striking for me to explore the digital worlds of these children. Watching all these videos,I noticed that today's kids are born digital - born into a networked world of infinite possibilities. Looking back to my childhood I remember myself being surprised at seeing the first computer in the world on Television. However, as time goes on, we observe that within several years we already see the advent and fast development of new kinds of technologies.These unique kids showed how they master digital tools. They show how they use new media to learn, create, collaborate,communicate, socialize in ways we in our generation could scarcely imagine. Another thing that struck me is that the

kids know technology so deeply that they express their willingness to teach others, even their teachers and make everyone understand what is probably going to be the future. 

     As a TEFL professional I learn and understand how digital tools are changing the classroom. Teachers need to know to teach all students according to today's standards in response to an increasingly complex society and a rapidly changing technology-based economy. I will definitely integrate at least one kind of technology into my curriculum as it is a perfect tool to teach and to learn. This will help me as a teacher connect students with sources of information and knowledge that allow them to explore ideas, foster creativity, acquire and synthesize information, frame and solve problems. 

      The project called Hole-in-The-Wall by Sugata Mitra is very important in understanding the main role of technology in human's life. It is such an idea that offers the world a surprisingly fresh and new perspective on the learning process. Breaking the

traditional confines of a school, Hole-in-The-Wall employs a unique collaborative learning approach and encourages children to explore together,learn and just enjoy,to collectively own and access,to express themselves,and at some stage to even brainstorm and come up with exciting ideas. They picked up skills and tasks by constructing their own learning environment. Even in the absence of any direct input from a teacher,an environment that stimulates curiosity causes learning through self-instruction and peer-shared knowledge.

     Based on the three sources it can be concluded that the access to digital technology brings about a new way of learning. Technology can and does, support learning. Today digital youth generation cannot imagine life without technology. Different kinds of technologies can be used and employed in classroom environment both by teachers and the students for teaching and learning purposes. Students can make videos and movies, watch tutorials, work on projects, play games, create their personal websites. Technology brings new opportunities and competitive advantages in terms of accessing information, creating rich technology-based environments where students experience new and challenging things, and connecting students with new and different people, places and things. Having these opportunities, we can ensure that these technology-facilitated opportunities benefit learning and every child's future. So let digital natives learn on their own and allow them to pursue their passions in using technologies.