Bit By Bit

Reflection on:
“iPods- iSpeak- iSing- iListen- iLearn”
By Silvia Tolisano

I first listened to this podcast/presentation weeks ago, and never got around to reflecting on it. So, I fired it up today, listened to it again, got excited again, and fired up the Blog.

There are so many great ideas in this podcast about the reason for Podcasting! First, however, it serves as a great introduction to teachers who want to understand what a podcast is, and I will direct many people to this presentation for years to come, I’m sure.

Tolisano does a great job of talking about the different options for using podcasts (gives a great rundown of iPods) and how to hook it up to your car to increase Prof. Development on the way to and from work (something I’ve been benefiting from for the past 2 years).

Tolisano mostly comes from the ESL/language teacher perspective with her ideas, but there’s plenty here for everyone. Podcasts do serve very well for second language learning as there is a plethora of pocasasts in other languages.

I especially loved her social studies idea of creating (and getting involved in her podcast) “Where in the World” podcasts.

Tolisano talks about the benefit of using podcasts to document the learning — not just at the end of a unit — but during the learning. Podcasting makes this very easy to do. There’s a great example of using podcasting to assess individuals on singing.

One great site that Tolisano offered up is gabcast.com where students could “call in” reflections that a teacher could later use in a podcast or post on a blog. What a great way to incorporate the “dreaded” cell phones in the classroom! I went to the site and quickly found this link of 7th graders giving book talks!

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