The idea behind the session, and the use of the tool came from discussions Greg McVerry, Sue Ringler-Pet and I had last year at NCTE about using all these great ICT tools to scale down and actually limit the experience for students. We thought about ways that we could go very low-tech in working with ICT tools. We also discussed how many people we collaborate with comment on how new and digital literacies and the multimodal (visual) nature of the Internet are almost bringing us back to a culture full of oral traditions…on a global scale. This lesson, and the use of audio podcasts and Soundcloud is developed for that goal.
The basic idea behind the lesson is creating audio recordings of poetry and playing them for students to listen to. The students are to then respond to the recordings and share their feelings about the audio presentation of the poetry. After a couple reading, listening, and writing sessions…I would suggest moving on to having students write their own poems and create audio recordings of these poems.
After reviewing several podcast, and audio recording apps on the iPad, I settled on the use of Soundcloud. This tool allows you to record, and share clips using their online portal. Additionally, using “secret links“, you can share podcasts with students while keeping this information private from other Soundcloud and Internet users.
For a detailed description on this process…please visit the materials I pulled together on the MA NLI Wiki by clicking here.
