Mel's Digital Learning Community

After being slightly disappointed by my original case studies and their lack of K-12 experience Dawn shared with me two articles that included a K-12 setting. Woohoo! The first article I read was by Hani Morgan and it was titled,   Focus on Technology: Creating and Using Podcasts Promotes Student Engagement and Learning. In this article , Morgan talks about podcasts and how either listening or designing them can benefit students in many ways and it gives many tips on how to effectively integrate podcasts into the classroom. The article specifically looks at how podcasts help students learn new content and promote language development, especially with ELL students. This article is very good and I highly recommend it to you. The next article I read was by Khe Foon Hew and it was titled, Use of audio podcast in K-12 and higher education: a review of research topics and methodologies . In this article Hew looks at several different studies on the use of podcasts in K-12 and Higher ...

I have looked at three case studies on podcasts in classrooms. It was difficult to find case studies in an elementary classroom   since most were based on undergraduate and graduate students. The first case study I read was Podcasting in Middle School: A Case Study and Implications for Teacher Education . In this case study, they two middle school teachers designed podcast based projects for their 7th grade English course and their 8th-grade computer literacy course. The case study explained the process of the projects and the teacher expectations as well as the final outcome. In the 7th grade, English class students were to write a story and present it in podcast form. The teacher had students focus on other podcasts to understand how to engage an auditory learner, not just through the story but the sound effects and music. Then in groups, they adapted well-known stories and put their versions into podcasts. In the 8th grade, Computer Literacy class students were asked to make...

While using a podcast in the classroom might be new to you and me, many teachers are using podcasts in their classrooms daily.   Michael Godsey, an English teacher in California, writes a great article for The Atlantic on the value of podcasts in his classroom. He noticed it was a struggle to get his students to read. When he introduced the podcast Serial to his class he found many of his students reading the transcripts of the podcast.  Godsey explained how many of his ELL students enjoyed reading the transcripts while listening to the podcast because it helped them understand what they were reading and it also helps them with understanding the language and pronunciation. Another English teacher, Alexa Schlechter from Connecticut, also used the podcast Serial, by This American Life with her English class. In the article for MindShift by Linda Flanagan, her students spent months listening and reading the blog about Serial. When they finished she felt it wouldn’t ma...