Building



William Hall's Podcast en Español | November 11th and 19th

**William Hall’s Podcast en Español** is a student-driven podcast that exists to provide for classroom extension and knowledge retention. Students were provided with an extra credit opportunity after school where they crafted their daily notes from class into a podcast that presented the knowledge and skills acquired. I was pleased as I oversaw students working on the project and was only used to ensure that key vocabulary words were pronounced correctly.
 *  Description of Project media type="custom" key="6190319" align="right"**


 * How to Conjugate** is a podcast that focuses on conjugating ER and IR verbs. Although the process for conjugating all verbs in Spanish is quite similar, there are a few special nuances in regards to conjugating infinitive verbs that end in ER and IR. Listen as my students provide different examples of infinitive verbs with ER and IR endings, as well as describe the three step process for changing a verb to match the subject completing the action.


 * What Food Tastes Like** is a podcast that teaches you how to tell a waiter what food tastes like in Spanish. This podcast is terrific for learning basic describing words for food, and tremendously useful for when you want to travel to a Spanish-speaking country or community.

The experience was enjoyable, however it became exceedingly difficult to get students to show up after class on a regular basis to create the podcast. The process of working with students to create the podcast was interesting, as well as another huge learning experience for myself as an educator, because it provided me with a different perspective of my students. Seeing them work with technology was exciting. They were focused an engaged, as well as truly open to learning. Despite being in a highly advanced age technologically, our kids and students only seem to understand technology within limited contexts. Unfortunately, none of those contexts have anything to do with producing high quality work--yet.
 * Reflection of Podcast Experience **

I only produced two podcasts with my students, because of the scheduling issues. Aside from the few times that worked for us after school, many of them were already engaged in numerous after school programs, sports, etc. I, myself, am a first year teacher who takes graduate courses at night, so finding a time where we could meet consistently was troublesome. Finally, after taking brief surveys from my classrooms, I determined that there were easier ways to reach my students for remediation. This ultimately caused my focus, in regards to podcasting, to shift towards a new avenue.

 **Technology Standards Addressed **Maryland Teacher Technology Standards: V. Integrating Technology into the Curriculum and Instruction **  Design, implement and assess learning experiences that incorporate use of technology in a curriculum-related instructional activity to support understanding, inquiry, problem solving, communication and/or collaboration. 1. Assess students’ learning/ instructional needs to identify the appropriate technology for instruction. 2. Evaluate technology materials and media to determine their most appropriate instructional use. 3. Select and apply research-based practices for integrating technology into instruction.

 ** Maryland Student Technology Standards: ** ** Grade 6 and 7 A. Communication ** ** 1. Select and use technology for communication **  a) Use communication tools (such as e-mail, discussion boards, online conferences, Learning Management Systems, portfolios) to gather information, share ideas, and respond to questions * b) Present information independently to various audiences c) Evaluate the appropriateness of media formats for various purposes * **