Podcasting

A podcast is a type of digital media consisting of an episodic series of video, PDF and audio files subscribed to and downloaded through web syndication or streamed online to a computer or mobile devices. Podcasting has several advantages.

 It improves pronunciation, listening skills and also it improves writing skills, if one writes reflection after each episode he/she has listened to or watched. While reading two articles  I learned about podacasts more than knew about it before. Some students liked podcasting and said that it was useful, some of them said that it was waste of time and it took a lot of time from them.  Another advantage that podcasts have, is that students can listen to themselves after recording their podcasts. While listening to their recordings they can work on their pronunciations, their mistakes and drawbacks. Then they can also get feedback from their teachers, working on particular weaknesses that they may not notice themselves.

    As for me using podcasts is very helpful profitable and useful process for improving one's language skills. Besides it's very motivating that one can find materials from different domains,  not only connected with education. Students can listen to podcasts wherever they are, if they have mobile devices or iPods with them.  And if you have a lot of experience and can handle podcasts skillfully you can even record your own podcasts, share it with your friends, listen to your friends' podcats and discuss it together, so it means podcasts also enhance collaboration which improves your speaking skills as well. Besides if you do not understand any detail very well, you can listen to it again and again till you catch the meaning to the full.

 

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                                            Blogging or Microblogging.

 Whether or not we are ready to implement blogging and/or microblogging in our own teaching?

                             

Nowadays the technology plays very important role in our  lives. We can't imagine our life without it. Blogs and Microblogs also have started to become popular among people. People have started to share the ideas, images and interesting and fresh information about everything. It's a pleasure to go through the blogs and find new things for you

Microblogging has become very popular among people. Twitter is one of the microblogging services that enable users to post brief messages and communicate with other users.  It has a huge advantage over usual discussion boards: Tweets consist of

short turns including no more than one or two utterances. Discussion boards usually

require the participants to create and follow up on a thread or to follow a thread and comment.

Twitter is a social network in which the members of a community share their current

activity . Microblogging tools enable users to post short messages

that are distributed within their community. Users can post messages from their

mobile devices, a Web page, from Instant Messengers and desktop clients. The same

channels are used for receiving messages.

Examples for using Twitter with EFL students

 1.Share useful information and resources with students. Reminding students about homework  2.Carry out quick surveys and polls to collect feedback on tasks, projects, etc.

 3.Ongoing storytelling in 140 characters

4. Providing feedback about presentations and classes

5.Receive text messages instead of e-mail messages 

Students be better users of English language. The immediacy of the messages helps the students feel like more of a community Connections, resources, ideas.

As for me as a future English specialist I would not give my Students any assignment with twitter. It would be waste of time. My students would not learn anything from it. Blogging is better than twitter for me. I would give them a homework assignment and ask them to write their ideas and thoughts in their blogs. Getting students involved in blogging can have a real impact on learning and teaching in the classroom. The best way to experiment with student blogging is to just jump in head first. Blogging can help both parents and teacher to see the students knowledge such as: writing comments. They can see how they can use correct spelling, punctuation, how the student understands the lesson and writes comments. Then the teacher can take part to the discussions with the students. Though it is hard to evaluate the students  with their comments and discussions in their blogs. I would look through all their posts, discussions and comments, then I would do my comment under their discussions and then it'd be clear whether they have done my assignments or not, whether they have aswered to all my given questions that i have assigned for their homework.

Whil Richardson '' Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms''

In this book Richardson provides a pragmatic and accessible description of the read/write Web.      Richardson explores both the tools and the potential impact these tools have for our classrooms, our teaching, and society.The book is really interesting and gives us good information about new technologies. It has become abvious that blogs can promote students critical and analytical thinking. Nowadays blogs are being used as class portals, online fillng cabinets for studnet work, e-portfolios, knowledge management and even school Websides. In this case the studnets have much more opportunities to think critically and analiticaly.

 Wikis interrelate people together. If one wants to tell his/her friends something, he/she can sign up in wikispaces.com write his idea and everybody can see it editing answers to the written idea. They also motivate students to learn. I also want to mention that wikis help students to study out of classroom. They can join the wikispaces wherever they are if they have access to the internet, then if they join it, they can solve problems with the help of each other, discuss some questions, and give answer to difficult problems.  A podcast is a type of digital media consisting of an episodic series of video, PDF and audio files subscribed to and downloaded through web syndication or streamed online to a computer or mobile devices. Podcasting has several advantages. It improves pronunciation, listening skills and also it improves writing skills, if one writes reflection after each episode he/she has listened to or watched. 

"Am I ready to introduce blogging to my own EFL class? 

 I exactly would like to do with it in my class  in terms of assignments, technology access, assessment, parental involvement.
Frankly speaking I liked blogging. It's really a huge and wide technological tool that can help teachers to make their lessons more innovative and intresting. It could help the students to share their ideas, to find new informations  together, to discuss new things. For EFL class it could be new thing, and the students would really like the idea and work with tehchnolgical tools. They would do their homework assignments with pleasure I guess, As the schools don't give the needed things and knowledge that new generation wants. They want to work with new technologies, new digital tools and describe the secrets that they couldn't find or search.

Reflection on question 1:

Digital youth portraits: What struck you most in these stories? What do these stories teach you? What do they mean for you as a TEFL professional in Armenia?

      The stories gave us a view about new technologies. These stories taught me a lot of new things about new devises.

      They were quite different stories but had the same idea and the same purpose. I found out an important thing from all of these videos. I understood that teacher’s role has become  less important now. Children have started to become visual learners. They say if they don’t understand the materials the teacher explained them,  they can learn it from the computer very easily.  Children want love learning and they don’t want search, they want use they searched for. New technologies are better for kids, because the children have great ideas. It is said that the literacy is not about the text, it is about the combination of the visual, the oral interactivity and began to support children in all different way. The technology is the way to do it. So children don’t need to be gifted to teacher all the time. The computer can be their teacher as well.

              I as a future TEFL teacher think that new technologies still are being developed in Armenian schools. Teachers must be informed about the new technologies and help students to learn easier and faster. The stories mean for me that we have a lot of opportunities to teach them with new devises, on the other hand according to the stories the students didn’t need the help of any teacher. They could connect to the internet and find or search the things that are interested in. 

Reflection on  question 2:

What flatteners discussed by Thomas Friedman do you find most amazing and why? What kinds of implications does this idea have for teaching and learning?

Thomas Friedmen talks about 10 flatteners. The first being the falling of the Berlin Wall in 1989, which tipped the balance of power across the world towards democratic free market and away from authoritarian rule. A second flattener is identified as our ability to not only author our own content, but to send it worldwide with the 1995 launch of the Internet. Subsequently, Free workflow software was developed, allowing people from around the world to collaborate and work together on projects using a shared medium. As Apache and Wikipedia came into play, people became able to develop and upload web content and community collaboration became another flattening force. Then the next flattens are Netscape, which is one of the most important flattener in the planet. It was a huge flattener that gave us an internet, 4.Uploading, 5.Outsourcing, 6.Off shoring, 7.Supply-chaining, 8.In sourcing-again talks about the collaboration between people and companies which is done through UPS, 9.Informing and the last one 10.The Steroids- it is the wireless internet connection which gives people an opportunity to connect with the internet without any devise.

As for me each of them were amazing and interesting. These are the new use of technologies that are going to be developed. I liked The Steroids which is very usefull and gives a lot of opportunities to connect with the internet everywhere without any cables and devises, Netscape, and Free workflow software-  I liked them because these are collaborations on more different things, and helps colleges and universities to connect easier and faster, to send e-mails and do assignments via internet.

This gives a lot of implications in teaching and learning. It helps people to learn everything easier and faster from the internet and be able to communicate with each other

Reflection on question 3:

What connections do you find between the Hole in the Wall project by Sugata Mitra and the other two sources above: Digital Youth Portraits and Thomas Friedman's "The World is Flat"?

     

     All the videos that I watched were connected to each other. The main connection was collaboration. As it helps people to connect and communicate with each other.

The story of Sugata Mitra was very interesting. It was about the project which was called The Hole in the Wall. Sugata has done an experiment with kids. He put the computer in the hole and let the kids to come and use it. After some time later he saw that the kids could use the computer and talk with each other. Children who knew nothing about computer and English, started using it all by their own, and say some English words like delete enter, etc. This resulted that kids became self educated.

      In Digital Youth Portraits and in Friedman’s “The World is Flat” i could see more similarities. Kids became better partners when they started using technology mainly computers to find more opportunities to serve for their needs. They didn’t need anyone’s support. They had a lot of ideas that could help them to be informed and learn more by their own.

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