Thing 19

Podcast- Here are the podcasts I listened to:

Coffee Break Spanish Lesson 48- a discussion on adjective agreement- great for beginning learners; could be used in a Spanish 1 classroom depending on the topic

Spanish Pod- "Del Taco al Tango"- a discussion of Arab influence on Spanish language and culture- very advanced Spanish- college level

Learn Spanish Survival Guide- "At the restaurant 2"- for beginners- gives students a chance to break pronunciation and use common, useful phrases; good for Spanish 1 or 2

Learn Spanish Pod101- "Absolute Beginner #5- gives everyday scenarios and explains what was said in the conversation; I'd say more for Spanish 2 or 3 in high school. What I loved about this one is that it has speakers from 5 different countries, so students could have the chance to hear various accents and compare vocabulary and expressions.

Grammar Girl- Dangling participles- I was surprised by how clear this concept was explained

I also looked at the Audio Books sites to see which books are available for free

I think my students would prefer "vodcasts" because most of them are visual learners and I think would have a hard time with just listening. A vodcast would reach both visual and audio learners. However, practicing listening is useful- both as a life skill and as a foreign language skill.

I could make a list of podcasts like the example pages shown and give my students the url (such as my wikispaces url) to check them out. I think I would try to send them to as few pages as possible. Having all of these amazing links on one website would be awesome. I would just have to be specific with my directions for which links they need to choose depending on the assignment.

I could see using podcasts at the beginning of class as a way to get my Spanish students hearing authentic language everyday. They already do some listening activities with a CD the textbook provides, but like I've said in other posts, students are more interested in real-life scenarios. They want to hear about the lives of actual people, not just Juan y Maria going to the store on the CD.

I would love to have my students create their own conversations via podcasts and share them with the class. We could post them on a student website. We could post them on the school's website under the foreign-language link where parents could listen to them. A colleague of mine just told me about Google audio and it's almost the same idea as a podcast. She explained more of it in an email. I think I might try that out this coming trimester and see how it works.

I think I still have to learn more about podcasts before I can think of "issues" I might face. I know we're told not to stream audio or video at work because it clogs the bandwith. We're told to download videos from teachertube, etc. I would like to learn more about "subscribing". I noticed links to subscribe, but I didn't sign up for any one podcast. Although I did download a few to i-tunes.