Blog Assignment 5

I listened to the podcast "Roamin' with the Ancient Romans" on the Eagles' Nest Radio & Class Blog. This particular group did a podcast about ancient Rome. They explained Roman architecture, the gladiator battles of the Coliseum, and the history of Julius Caesar and Cleopatra the 7th. They emphasized points that seemed to interest them personally. They were very enthusiastic about what they learned. The podcast was arranged in the format of a radio news broadcast.

What struck me the most about this production was the amount of things these children learned about Rome. I have always been interested in History, and didn't know that Cleopatra was the 7th, nor did I know that she was actually Roman. This would be a great project for my future students. I feel that they may be more interested in producing something like a podcast as opposed to writing a paper.

There were two things that struck me while watching the video on the blog post The Benefits of Podcasting in the Classroom. First was the use of podcasts as a way for students who have to miss school because of an illness to stay caught up on the lectures of the day. Since the start of this class I have been interested in using this method as well as others in my future classroom. It will also be a great way for students to review for tests, because all of the lectures will be available to them while at home.

Second was the use as a project based learning tool. As I said in the second paragraph of this post, this will be more fun for students to do then writing a paper. I also like that the parents of students will be able to see or hear what their children have learned or are learning just by going to the class website and clicking a link to a lecture or project.

I suggest everybody explore The Education Podcast Network. There are podcasts on this site for pretty much every subject we teach. Of course because I wish to be a history teacher I explored the Social Studies material. There were all kinds of different productions on historic events and figures. For example there was a link for podcasts pretaining to the American Revolution, the medieval period, and many more.

My idea for using these stems from something I learned while playing baseball. As a kid my dad would tell me something to do on the field, and I would not think it would work because in my mind he didn't know everything. I feel sometime students will have that feeling with the teachers they see everyday. It may hit home for them more if you let them listen to someone else tell them what you want them to hear.