iPods, blogs: Learning tools

In Ms. Gagliolo's classroom, 5th-graders record their poems, book reports, interviews and sounds on field trips, etc. and turn them into podcasts, the Washington Post reports. Podcasts are the personal "radio shows" that more and more people are creating, that can be downloaded to an iPod or other MP3 player, and that Apple now provides for free in iTunes' podcast directory. In fact, Ms. Gagliolo's students could submit their podcasts to iTunes for the listening public! Other examples, the Post mentions: "In a private school near Detroit, middle-schoolers podcast performances of student-composed musical works. From East Oakland, Calif., high-schoolers paint an audio portrait, in English and Spanish, of their troubled community." Teachers have been doing similarly creative motivational work with classroom blogs for a while now. CNET links to some great examples and looks at some new tools that make classroom blogging a little less public, a little safer.