Thing #17

The first neat thing about this activity is that I got to revisit some of the sites I had stumbles onto during earlier activities in our wanderings throughout the Web. I had already signed up for Just One More Book and have been enjoying their book reviews. I especially enjoyed the one they did for today (7/1) because it dealt with the foster care of animals. I did notice that on Learn Out Loud they had free audio books to download. At the Education Potcast Network my attention was caught by Voices on Antisemitism. While I wandered through the Skip the Tuition: 100 Free Podcasts from the Best Colleges in the World I got sucked into Earthquakes in Your Backyard because of the small quakes that have happened recently just a short distance from our own town.

Since I visited every single one of these sites I noticed that on some you didn't even need to download to iTunes but could listen directly from the site. That meant less steps and, for me, an easier process in listening to the podcasts. At Geek!Ed! I was intrigued by the teachers and staff discussing the differences in their classes and their use of the available technology in two separate years. The "personalities" of each class made it difficult for them to evaluate their program where each student had a computer to work from. Anything to do with books immediately catches my attention and so I had to check out Authors on Tour Live. That is where I discovered a new series (new to me) of books that I know will interest my mother. That means I will be looking for books in the Elm Creek Quilts series before I go next week to see Mom. The math sites that I visited offered higher order thinking skills, and even branched out into social studies when I visited mathgrad podcast. Check our their archives for Mathematics of Maps and see if you can use it for a lesson in reading maps.

The science sites looked like they would be perfect for teasers to get the attention of the class. In 60 Second Science I even thought that some of those spots could be used to introduce experiments. Since we have animals in my school environment I was interested in the podcast on animal behavior. As you can tell I didn't have any trouble in finding podcasts that could be used in the classroom and the library. I may even have to break down and get an iPod or MP3 player to have a more portable means of all of these wonderful sources that I've just skimmed over the surfaces. After hearing podcasts by students of all ages I can see that it would certainly be within the realm of possibility to create them within our school as well.