Who's Down With P-O-D (casts)?

This week, I took my first venture into podcasts. I had subscribed to a few before on iTunes, but I never really knew how they worked or what they were about. Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised at just how many podcasts are out there & readily available for use in the English classroom!

The one I want to share with you today is the This I Believe series.


Every week, the This I Believe website publishes a new podcast that includes a selection of a number of This I Believe essays. This I Believe essays are statements of personal beliefs and are written by people from all around the world from all walks of life. Browsing through, you might find a piece by Muhammad Ali, a kindergartner, Bill Gates, a housewife, athletes - anyone and everyone you can think of. They even have recordings of essays that date back to the 1950's, when a radio show called This I Believe aired! It is an amazing website to browse around and a project that everyone can participate in.

The podcast is published once a week, and features at least one essay - you never know what you're gonna get from the selected piece! I love the This I Believe writing prompt and I love listening to all the different stories, so I would definitely like to use this podcast in my teaching.

What I would like to encourage my students to do is listen to the weekly podcast. I plan to use This I Believe quite a bit in my teaching, both for listening/reading and writing. I would ask students to take note of ones that stand out in particular to them, and create space for students to share them with one another and discuss.

As a teacher, I would listen to the podcast each week to keep myself fresh and listening to lots of different essays, as I'm always searching for ones that can relate to themes we're dealing with in class. One of my favorites that I plan to use is Jackie Robinson's This I Believe piece called "Free Minds and Free Hearts." This piece dates back to the 50's, and would tie in nicely with a unit on the civil rights movement- it has a great message behind it and paints a clear picture of some of the struggles Mr. Robinson had to face. I hope to be able to deal with issues of social justice in my classroom, and this podcast would work well to frontload a text such as Warriors Don't Cry by Melba Patillo Beals. Just as I would link Jackie Robinson's piece with this text, I would keep my ears open for other essays (in the podcast) that relate to other texts that we read throughout the year. Along the same lines, I would have students listen to different This I Believe pieces to find one that expresses a big idea or message that they take away from a piece of literature that we read together. For example, if we finished up Macbeth, I could have them search for This I Believe pieces that talk about the ways to reach your ambition, what type of person to be in the face of greed, or any theme or lesson that stuck with them from the play.

Ultimately, I would like to have my students write their own This I Believe essays and record them for submission to the website. After hearing a number of them throughout the year, they will be familiar with the format and guidelines of the piece, and know what it takes to make a really compelling statement of personal belief. I would love, for example at the end of the social justice unit I mentioned above, to have students reflect on what they are willing to stand up for in their lives, and write and record a piece on that topic. How awesome would it be to hear my students' voices on this podcast one day?

I also stumbled upon some other great podcast resources and ideas, including readings of various pieces of literature that are often studied in schools, such as Frankenstein on Learnoutloud.com. This would be really helpful for students who are auditory listeners or who would just like to listen to a story be read to them. I also got some great ideas from browsing around different Harry Potter fan podcasts. Many of these sites published reviews in their podcasts- of chapters, books, and film. I could have my students work in groups and each be assigned a chapter of a book or portion of a film to critique, review or just discuss on their podcast. This would be a great way to get students to collaborate on creating a response or reaction piece to something we read or watch in class - and by the end of the school year, we could have a whole archive of podcasts to go back and listen to! And it would be a great way for students to remember their experiences with literature - something they can always go back to!

All Around the World...

This week, I explored the learning site, ePals.
If you aren't familiar with ePals, I found this video extremely helpful.

What is ePals?
The tagline of this website reads, "Where Learners Connect." And that's just it - ePals is a website that creates a global community and a global classroom. Students in different towns, different states, different countries AND on different continents are able to connect, collaborate and become classmates. The site is set up so that teachers, students and even families can work together and share with people from anywhere around the world in a safe technological environment to create amazing pieces of work and new understandings.

Which features of ePals are most useful?

-One of the best features of this website is the possibilities it allows for students to collaborate with students from all over the world. Students can become familiar with different cultures, "visit" different places and "meet" different people just by clicking around on this website. This relationship with different cultures helps to make them seem less foreign to students and in doing so, makes the world a smaller place for them. I would hope that this would lead students to adopt a more global attitude in that they would be more accepting of others, rather than isolating themselves in their own culture and experiencing culture shock later on in life. It also makes for great opportunities to learn languages, or at the very least, play with the languages as they interact with one another.

-Another feature of this website that I think is awesome for teachers is the endless opportunities it provides for teacher collaboration! Since the advent of the internet, teachers have been able to do this more and more, but with the ePals website, teachers can begin to reach out to an exponential number of educators - and parents and students! Teachers can search for new lesson plans on this site, and I especially loved the feedback feature where teachers can post handouts, tests, or ideas to the website and receive critiques and comments from other teacher users. Teachers can also find inspiration from the many projects that they can get involved in or see other teachers doing, and through these, create totally unique learning opportunities for their students! Plus, the website is oober-organized and has so much information!! You can find forums, resources, libraries, teacher galleries - everything a teacher could need, all in one, easy to navigate website! It's a definite must-use teacher tool!

-More great features and ideas below...

How could I use this website in my teaching?

-One thing that I feel very passionate about in my future as an English educator is the use of multicultural texts. I am dedicated to introducing my students to different perspectives, different lifestyles and different cultures so that they can become familiar with them and be comfortable in the very diverse world in which we live! I want my students to be exposed to all of these so that even if they don't live in a diverse area, or interact with people different from themselves on a daily basis, they can learn to have respect for all walks of life and all different people. I was excited to see how useful ePals will be to help reach these goals and to supplement my multicultural texts that we read. If we read a text based on a character who lives in China, Africa, India, or anyplace for that matter, we can set up a connection with a classroom full of students the same age who live everyday in that culture and place! This would give my students great insight into the experiences of the characters and the cultures that are involved in the text. This would add so much wealth to the students' experiences and really make the story and setting come alive! Students could interview their "classmates" or collaborate on a project with one another, during which they can teach each other about their lives!

-I would love to use the Projects feature on ePals in my classroom one day! The types of projects we can get involved with are so diverse, creative and unique! I love the endless possibilities this creates for learning experiences for my students - that many other students are already participating in! Not only would this keep my teaching creative and changing from year to year, but it would engage my students in meaningful, long-lasting learning. To be able to extend the walls of our classroom to reach around the world, and to learn from and work with people from all over the globe is a really exciting and powerful experience for students to have. I could check back frequently to check for projects that are relevant to what we're doing or would just be awesome to be involved in - we can participate in whatever might be useful and/or enjoyable!

-Along the same vein of my goals for introducing students to different cultures, many of the ePals projects aim to create understandings of and experiences with different cultures. One that I came across that would do both of these things, and is extremely appropriate for this time of year is the "Holidays and Festivals Around the World" - where students for all over the world share their traditions (how awesome!) - and another called "The Way We Are" - in which students about the way they live. I would definitely like to get my students involved in these types of projects to become more familiar with different people, lifestyles and cultures. To engage learning that brings to light differences in cultures, in which students are actually learning from the members of that culture, is totally unique in today's classrooms, and is an experience that I would love to offer for my students.

-My favorite project that I feel is particularly relevant for the English classroom was the storytelling project. Getting my students active in something like this would encourage them to read and write for a purpose. I've seen many teachers try to engage their students in writing workshops - this project does just that, and in a much more effective way! I love the use of "digital storytelling" in this project versus regular storytelling because students are so in tune with images and visual pieces these days - it would be awesome to add another creative aspect to their writing pieces, and that's the digital piece in these stories do just that. I also think that the publication of their stories to a global audience adds a great deal of incentive for students to work harder on their pieces. An added layer to the positives of this project is the opportunity to learn the role of stories in different cultures, and how different cultures tell them. It would be really cool to look at the elements of stories that are valued in some cultures and not in others. This would be a really interesting study to conduct!

-A final thing I would really like to get my students working on is social action projects, in which students research a current issue that is relevant to their lives, their communities or their world, and then do something about it - take action. In these projects, students investigate whatever they'd like, and then make a change or get involved in some capacity - publishing a report on it, volunteering for a cause, writing to a politician, and so on. As I browsed through the projects and forums, I noticed that many of the titles - such as global warming - suggested that students would be discussing global issues. I would encourage my students to connect with others who are already active in those projects or discussion boards to create a plan to make an impact. In the case of global warming, students could each write a piece of how the climate change/global warming has begun to affect their area, and then compile these into giant image of the worldwide effects of global warming! Students could then talk about maybe sending this in to major leaders in the movement, like Al Gore, publishing their pieces in local papers, or thinking up ways to promote environmentally friendly practices. How amazing would this be? Then, students could continue the project to talk about what change has come about in relation to or as a result of their work.

-Lastly, I will definitely take advantage of all of the awesome teacher resources this website offers, especially the lesson plan forums, teacher gallery, and feedback tool. One of my greatest worries is that after grad school, I will not be able to get the feedback my classmates have given me, or the great ideas that I take away from each class. This website gives me an in to continue doing all of these things, and keep my instruction fresh, current, and relevant to my students, as well as network, get teacher tips, and stay involved in the education conversation.

I am really excited about ePals - check it out!