For any of you out there that attended the podcasting presentation in class the other week(eek time flies), you know what I mean when I say that it was SOO informative! Hello audio tools I never knew how to use, its nice to finally learn about your existence! But really I was actually incredibly grateful to the presenters for giving an engaging but very educational presentation.
All of the coolness of their presentations aside however, I have to wonder what this tool could really do to improve student learning in a Biology class. I can see how creativity and functionality could flow from these in the humanities and I think that the sample podcasts that the presenters gave were awesome (I think that the podcasts convinced me to actually do those fictional assignments) but us Biology kids could only come up with half hearted uses in our discipline.
One idea that I did think was really cool would be to use podcasting as a note taking device during a lab, especially a lab that requires a lot of hands on maneuvering, however I wonder if this would take away from the valuable lesson of teaching students how to keep proper scientific records. Also a lab is not typically the most desirable location for doing a podcast, as multiple groups will be up around and talking as well.
With all of that said I would like to invite the ideas of the audience, what do you think a science teacher could do to bring this cool piece of technology into the classroom in a meaningful way?
In the meantime I am content with the knowledge of how to use cool tools like garageband for myself, even if I can't bring it into the classroom yet.
Lauren,
ReplyDeleteAs a Podcasting presenter for the Blue cohort, I can say that, even with all of the research that I did for this tech tool, science applications are hard to find! I found myself up to my elbows in iTunes, listening to short stories of women scientists who beat the odds and fought their way into the profession and to British radio scientists discussing the history of Boron... However, when looking into tools such as Google Voice and Vocaroo, the possibilities of student-real world connections began to open up. What if students were asked to interview their grandparent about their experiences of the nuclear bombs in WWII or to interview a scientist in field? They could record the conversation and have that record to refer back to, instead of worrying about writing every word down during the conversation. However, these projects don't get to the heart of core concepts, and I am beginning to view the utility of these tools through that lens.
If you do find uses for Podcasting in the science classroom, please share! I would love to hear about them!
Laura
Hey Lauren,
ReplyDeleteI feel the same way about bringing Podcasting into the math classroom. Like you, I see a lot of usefulness in it for humanities subjects, but I'm struggling to find how to make it beneficial for math or science subjects. One thing I thought about for the math classes would be to have them research different math topics that we don't have time to cover in class, and have them create short podcasts on them that their classmates can listen to. I think the same thing could be used for science classes. They could research different experiments or technologies being used in science and create short podcasts. I also thought about having my students create "Math News Stories" where they do a news type segment about something going on in the world that has to do with math. This could be done in science as well! I hope this gives you a few ideas, and definitely let me know if you come up with others that you think could be used in math as well!
Hi, Lauren,
ReplyDeleteAs the science member of this podcasting group, I understand how difficult it can be to think of ways to use podcasts in any branch of science. I think the assignment I used to make my podcast made sense, but I also think that it is another case of using technology for the sake of technology, a common theme with my comments on colleagues' blogs. I can definitely see the use of using podcasts in an English class where using words and language is important, but I don't know how it would add much to a science class. Especially looking at NGSS, I don't think using podcasts would accomplish any of the practices, although I do think you could use podcasts as the medium for some of the practices. For instance, students could analyze a podcast as a form of data, and you could have the students reflect on the differences between using a podcast as data and other forms of data. Additionally, podcasts could be used as a way of communicating information obtained from doing a lab. I do agree that it would be difficult to do this in a crowded science classroom, though. I know there are times in my classroom that I feel like it's too loud just for talking within groups, so I would imagine it would be hard to record anything in that type of setting.
Lauren, your post and the responses you received make me think of an A2 science teacher who did about as much cool stuff with podcast creation as anyone I know. I think that he did a lot more of it when he was at a middle school than he does at the HS where he now teaches, and his MS stuff isn't on the web anymore. I will inquire...
ReplyDelete