My students have completed their first individual podcasts and will be handing them in over the next couple of days. I had a chance to ask them how it went during todays class. What follows is an overview of what they shared.
- - when asked how long it took them, most of them said about 2-4 hours. One gr. 6 boy said 20 minutes...I'm thinking that it'll show.
- - when asked what took the longest, they said that practising what to say and recording quality speaking/reading took the most time. Ka-CHING. That's exactly what I hoped the answer would be. From what I've been reading, fluency improves through practice reading aloud, and through performance reading. So that's encouraging.
- tech related problems seem to be minimal, and kids are game to solve the problems they are running into. I'm so encouraged by their willingness to do this at home. All I basically had to do was train them during one week of class time, then give them the due date for their first individual project , and Voila! great kids. just great.
- So funny listening to kids share how they holed up in their rooms and kicked their parents out of the house so that they could record in peace. They're soooo shy! I have to laugh. I asked them if they shared their projects with their parents. NOOO WWayyyy! I found that funny. I mean, I'd be so interested in what my kid was doing for school projects, especially if it was a little unique.
That basically sums up what they shared today in class. Here are some other things rumbling in my mind.
- I'm requiring them to include music in their intro/outro. But, I am not stipulating that it needs to be royalty free. Basically, I figure 50cent won't care one jot if some kid in Saudi Arabia is using 10 seconds of one song to do some school assignment. Is this bad??? Not that I care a whole lot. to be frank. But, maybe I'm just not well informed on the issue.
- I want to survey the kids and get some more data on how they are feeling about podcasting and whether they feel they're improving their oral fluency. But, I'm not sure what to ask, and how to formulate the questions/answers. I guess I should get that data collected this week. Kind of a halfway checkpoint. Any suggestions??
- as for data, does anyone else feel like their collecting a jumble of data that they can hopefully distill into something meaningfull when the time comes??? I guess I'd rather err on the side of having more than enough data and chopping some. Then again, a 6 page paper doesn't allow for a whole heap of data to be analysed and reported on. (hallelujah)
That's about all for now. In case you were wondering, I do not have the podcasts on itunes. I'm just uploading them to a general "Great Reading" blog, courtesy of Wordpress. Here's the address if you're at all curious. http://www.greatreading.wordpress.com/
tata.
1 comment:
I was impressed by your “Great Reading” blog. I particularly liked the podcasts where your students discussed their favorite literary characters.
Have you ever directed your kids to the Poetry Archive (http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/studentsHome.do )? Listening to poets read aloud from their works might help with oral expression.
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