Please stop by to have a cup of coffee and share a poem or saying that has shaped your outlook on life.

Sunday, June 29, 2008

NM Schools test podcast teaching

I ran across this article, "Schools help test podcast teaching" in the Sunday Cincinnati Enquirer. It tells about a pilot study in which Microsoft gave Zunes (analogous to Apple's ipods) to 100 students at a rural New Mexico high school. Students were encouraged to be linked to their devices at school, on the bus and on fieldtrips. They watched videos and listened to podcasts that their teachers recommended or had recorded. Test scores and data were shared with Microsoft.

I thought a couple of things were interesting - Teachers were given $400 monetary incentives to develop podcast lessons or recommend 20 relevant downloadable lectures. It may take ncentives like that to push teachers off their perch into using new technologies.

Yes, the school instituted a "grandma rule" to keep students from uploading to the devices anything their grandmothers would find objectionable, and teachers could designate "No Zune Zones".

I'm sure this was a novelty at first, but I could easily see this becoming an everyday part of students' learning. I think these podcasts could be particularly helpful for students who are poor readers or visually imparied, since they could listen to teachers reading or summarizing texts or review lectures.

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