Catching up with the Six Year Olds! A blog about podcasting

I am admittedly a technology neophyte but am amazed at its growth, intrigued at its influence, and excited about its future. I am quite willing, even driven, to learn how to become more technology savvy but lack that innate ability to fearlessly maneuver the discipline. I share this as a prelude to a story about a first grade classroom with which I work. This past year the teacher complained that her students were interrupting her guided reading time everyday because they could not seem to work the cassette player in the listening center. The teacher had never had a class that had so much difficulty with this. She realized that none of the students had ever used a cassette player. She decided to purchase an MP3 player and then had her son  upload some stories on it. She placed the devise at the listening center, without instruction, and sat back to observe. She was amazed that the first pair of students picked up the MP3, found the title that matched the book on the table and began listening without asking for any assistance. Problem solved.

The point is that there is a generation of students in our elementary schools who are technologically fearless, unlike me, an “experienced” teacher. What happened in the classroom made me realize that we as educators must adjust our way of executing the standards so that we can catch up with these six year olds! If a first grader feels very comfortable with listening to books on MP3s then why not create little mini lessons via Podcasts to upload as well. This would be a great way to differentiate the curriculum to a classroom of students whose aptitudes and abilities are spread out all over the place. The teacher could create small remediation, review or enrichment lessons and assign them to different students to listen and respond to – all at the same time!

In the same way, a Media Specialist could create podcasts with instructions for equipment hook-up and operations, curriculum enrichment, book talks, resource sharing, etc. These could be shared with teachers, students, administration, and media colleagues. I chose to pursue a Media Specialist degree because I love literature, children, and sharing information. I am very excited about the new, 21 Century ways of sharing that information.

To learn more about creating Podcasts, visit some of the following links.

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/podcasting.htm
http://www.podcasting-tools.com/podcasting-101.htm
http://learninginhand.com/podcasting/
http://etec.hawaii.edu/proceedings/2008/Miltenoff2008.pdf

submitted by Diane Brannen