I know this whole I-Pod/Podcasting thing kind of strays away from the main focus of this blog, but it’s just been so interesting to watch the ways in which this particular little piece of hardware has exploded. And, I just can’t resist when I see people finding ways to adopt any of these tools into the classroom.

Hence this link to an article in Campus Technology about the ways that some professors are bringing the I-Pod into their teaching.

Several members of GC&SU’s faculty quickly rose to the challenge. According to Hank Edmondson, professor of Government, “My first vision for the iPod was to integrate music into a couple of my classes, so I started with War, Politics, and Shakespeare, downloading songs about war—from patriotic to protest—and adding some Elizabethan music. We also used the iPod to record the students presenting speeches they had chosen from one of the plays we were studying. After each reading, all of the iPods were updated for the benefit of the entire class; all of the students were made responsible for the material recorded by their peers.”

“Next,” Edmondson continues, “I incorporated the iPod into my freshman Ethics and Society class where I cover, in an historical organization, the leading moral philosophies. A big challenge in such a class is to convince the students that the material is relevant. The iPod is a tremendous help because I can choose a lot of popular music and associate different songs with different philosophies, showing the students how their own music reflects the ideas we are studying. Jim Morrison and the Doors were, by their own admission, influenced by the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche.”

Now I think that’s pretty cool, and it’s a good example of technology improving the delivery of the curriculum. Not a big leap to think about how this might work on the 8-12 level either.

Here’s where to go if you want some more detail on how it all works.
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George Mayo is a first year English teacher in Virginia Beach, Va. who has his sixth graders blogging in the “M & M Online Magazine.” It’s basically a series of 15 individual student blogs connected by a magazine homepage. It’s just coming together, but the best part of it is that his kids are obviously blogging about their passions: fashion, the NFL, skateboarding, video games, etc. And, they’re obviously not just writing for themselves:

Good evening every one this is Jean-Herbert R. writing. Today I will be writing about Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. In this video game you could be Harry, Hermonie, and Ron. The main idea of this game is that you have to fight the evil Dementors and you have another promblems…

In an e-mail, George writes:

Its been a great experience so far. I’m amazed at the care that most of the students are taking with their writing. Its also amazing to watch them spontaneously peer edit each other’s work.

It CAN be pretty amazing when kids are allowed to practice writing with topics that they are really interested in. Throw in a pinch of an audience, and this is a formula that would seem to be pretty conducive to enhancing a student’s ability to write.
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