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Sunday, March 14, 2010

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.

1 comment:

  1. I think learning a foreign language is one of the greatest reasons to listen to (or watch) podcasts. And if you could get your students to do their own! WOW, that would be way cool. What's so great is that microphones are not even required. Students can use the phone to record their podcasts! If I can help you set that up, please contact me.

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