Creating My Own Podcast

The podcast that I created is a mini lesson in 6th grade Earth science discussing the composition of the Earth, plate tectonics, and forces such as volcanos and earthquakes. In the audio podcast I talk about the layers of the Earth, the material they're made of, and how convection in the mantle causes plate movement in the crust. The video podcast discusses different types of plate movement including divergence, convergence between ocean and continent, convergence between two continents, and shearing, and the volcanos, earthquakes, and mountains that can result from these movements. I illustrated these concepts using images I found online which included diagrams of the types of plate movements and photos that show the results of these movements in real life, including volcanos in Iceland, the Mid-Ocean Ridge, the Andes Mountains, the Himalayan Mountains, and the San Andreas Fault. This lesson addresses three GLCEs from 6th grade science: E.SE.06.51 Explain plate tectonic movement and how the lithospheric plates move centimeters each year, E.SE.06.52 Demonstrate how major geological events (earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, mountain building) result from these plate motions, E.SE.06.53 Describe layers of the Earth as a lithosphere (crust and upper mantle), convecting mantle, and dense metallic core.

Using a class blog or wiki, podcasting can be a very useful tool for teachers to create audio tracks or short videos for their students that can serve as study tools leading up to tests or as review of difficult concepts. In some of the blogs I've looked at I've seen teachers film themselves solving math problems on the board and then posting these videos as podcasts. Such videos would be useful to students if they were struggling with a certain concept in math to help them review the lesson multiple times to review and increase their understanding. Teachers could also create podcasts that simulate a spelling test to allow students to prepare for the actual test. And they can obviously be used the way I've shown here to explain information in science that a student might need some review on. This similar concept could easily be used in social studies as well. Parents of students could also subscribe to a teacher's podcast to get updates on what goes on in their child's classroom. I can see lots of uses for podcasts in my future classroom as another method of sharing information, however in this case audio and video are used to present the information instead of written text. For students who like listening better than reading, podcasting may be a good way of reaching out to them and help them understand information better.

Bringing the Web to Me

For my project this week I chose to seek out content related to a particular subject area in my teaching. Math is one of my minors and I've mentioned in this blog before about wanting to use technology to help seek out ideas for math instruction, particularly ideas I can use to make math more engaging for students. I've had experience in some of my other teaching classes in searching out resources that would be useful for instruction in reading and writing, but not for math as of yet. This assignment seemed like a good opportunity to poke around on the web and find blogs, news, and other sites related to math education.

I found a couple blogs on math education that I think will be useful, Math Education Research Blog, written by a math ed professor in Sweden, and Homeschool Math Blog, written by a homeschool mom who enjoys teaching math and wants to share her ideas. Both of these blogs post news and research articles about math ed, links to sites with teaching resources, book reviews, and other thoughts about ideas in math education. The Math Education Research Blog also shares lots of good information about math education internationally, which I think will be beneficial for me as a teacher to find fresh ideas from countries other than the U.S. Another site I found, Math Shortcut, features printable math worksheets, lesson plan ideas, and links to online math games for students. Click here to see my public page on these resources from Google reader.

RSS definitely has potential to help me keep my thumb on the most up to date information, resources, and ideas in education. Not every good resource site has RSS feeds, as I found while searching for math ed websites, but many blogs and some sites do frequently post links to sites with useful tools and fresh lesson ideas. I definitely see benefits in checking out sites that others in my field recommend. I can use RSS to stay up to date on education news and research articles to further my professional development and knowledge of what is happening in the education field. To share information with parents, once I've created a strong collection of teaching resource feeds I'll be able to easily share information with parents concerned about some aspect of their child's education, or who just want to know more. For example, using my collection of feeds on math education, I can provide resources and ideas to parents of students either struggling in math or needing math enrichment activities to challenge them. For more technologically aware parents, I can encourage them to subscribe to RSS feeds of websites I've found, class blogs, or even my own blogs as well. I can see RSS as a great communication tool.

On another note, I set up an iGoogle this week, which I'm using to keep Google reader, Gmail, and Blogger all in one place. I also set up a calendar and even a moon phases widget, which is useful for some of the things I'm doing in SME 301 right now. I also subscribed to a couple color guard websites to stay up to date on that information. I'm hoping to add a few more of my own personal feeds to my reader soon.