St George - ESOL - Student blog and podcasting
Project focus
Rosa Ochoa an ESOL teacher from St George College is using Blogs, podcasting and now wikis to enhance her teaching of English to students. Content and subjects of the posts and casts link in with modules in being taught in class.
Blogging and podcasting are tools that the general community is using outside the classroom. The aim of bringing them into the ESOL class is to teach students English in a way that is real, by using tools that native speakers of English use to communicate. Blogging and podcsting are powerful ways to connect with other ESL students and teachers. Blogging is an ideal tool for students to practise reading and writing; podcasting is perfect to practise listening and speaking.
Wish to hear more?
Impact of the project
In the comments students leave on the blogs and in emails to the teacher, they very often say thank-you for not only teaching me English but also for teaching me the computer. So you can tell it’s sort of like you’re opening another world for them and they’re really grateful for that
Educational technology used
There has been a conscious decision to use Web2 technology. This is software which is free to use and easy to download from a personal computer. In this way we are giving students tools taht are easily accessed from their homes and for which they do not have to spend a lot of money. At the same time they are getting used to moving around the world of the Internet, searching for tools and discovering appropriate websites to enhance their learning.
For blogs we use blogger, one of many blogging providers (edubloggers is another good one for educators). For wikis you can use wikispaces and/or pbwiki (free of advertisements for educators).
There are two ways of producing podcasts. One is very simple, Audacity. It can be downloaded by IT staff together with Lame (an MP3 converter). You can host your mp3 files in Our Media, which is also freely available. Otherwise you can get Podomatic (an audio blog where you can upload mp3 files) or upload the files onto a wiki.
Recommendations for users
If anyone is thinking of using podcasts or blogs in class, I can only encourage them. They are real tools; it’s a way of getting students practising their oral and written skills. They’re going to produce a real piece of spoken/written text that is going to be published.
Ideally everything they produce should be integrated to the rest of the course. Topics and skills should be linked to the units of competency you are assessing.
