Response to "Using Digital Audio and Video Productions"

I truly appreciated how this chapter provided a variety of websites to visit for help and free software programs to use when creating podcasts or vlogs. I also appreciated how the chapter pointed out that technology can offer a wealth of help for our LD or ELL students. Too often, I think, teachers bemoan having LD students in their classrooms and think about the limitations it places on the class or teacher when in actuality there is a real opportunity for diversity and understanding that can occur if we only look for the resources that can help LD kids be successful. Blogging, vlogging, text-to-speech, voice recognition, and dictation tools sound like great ways to help all kids be heard and participate fully in learning.

I've never heard of the term "sonic literacies" before, but I like it. We could start an encyclopedia, though, of the number of literacies that exist now: digital literacy, media literacy, sonic literacy... It would be interesting to track just how many literacies there are.

Some ideas I had while reading this chapter for applications in the classroom included having students create a podcast of a role play for Julius Caesar--transforming the text in some way, perhaps. I also was thinking about how my students could create an audio tour of Spirit Lake, interviewing some of the locals and publishing it on the Spirit Lake Chamber of Commerce website. We also have a yearly community art show, Timberlake Creates, and my students could interview the artists and publish it to the web so that people could use the podguide when they view the installments at area businesses.

One of my struggles is attracting people of diversity to talk to my students since Spirit Lake is rather remote. For example, when we're studying Farewell to Manzanar, some of my students don't seem to "get" that we're talking about real people. It would be great to try to use skype to have the class possibly interview people who lived in some of the internment camps. This might help make it more "real" to them.

The information about vlogs is interesting, and certainly an option for providing alternative responses to literature. I think at this time, though, I might leave that for the more technically literate of my students to use as an option if they wish.

I need to start making a list--which in some form I've already done here--of my ideas for using in the classroom before I forget!