Numeros diecinueve y veinte

I really love the idea of podcasting!! As a teacher of a language, these are great tools to allow students to hear the language from someone other than myself. However, I have run into the same problem that I encountered every other time I have searched for these- finding appropriate ones for my classroom. I was excited to learn about the Educational Podcast Network and Podcast Alley, but I still had a hard time finding a site that fit into my curriculum.

I did finally come across some that I feel I could use, but the time factor really comes into play. [Finding the site, listening to all the podcasts (the one I found had over 30 podcasts in their database!!), making accompanying support documents, etc.. It really takes a lot of time. I'm confident that it would be a great support tool and the kids would like it, but it sure can take a while to prepare for classroom use.]

The two that I found most helpful were:
- Codyscuentos.com: This one has links to different fairy tales read in Spanish. Several of them even have the text so you can follow along as they are reading. I downloaded Los Tres Cerditos (The Three Little Pigs) and I found a kindergarten site that had clip art for this story. I pasted them into a PowerPoint presentation. I would like to put these pictures with the text and have the students listen to the story. There are many things I could do with this story- what comes to mind first is having students recognize psat tense verbs. While this usually comes up formally in Spanish II, I like to introduce it to my level I students as well. This would be a great vehicle to do so.

- NotesinSpanish.com: This one has links to several short Spanish lessons. There are two speakers in these podcasts and one of them is a native Spanish speaker. I liked the podcast about ordering tapas. In this one, they give common Spanish phrases needed for ordering tapas. The Spaniard also describes several common tapas that are ordered. This would fit in perfectly when I talk about tapas/ Spanish culture. I would want to make a worksheet to accompany this though. The worksheet would could have multiple choice questions or fill in the blanks for the students to complete while listening. The podcast itself is pretty long too- almost 30 minutes. I would either need to break it down to the most important parts or break it up over a couple days.

The idea that I found most inspiring was creating my own podcasts for the students in my classroom. In one of the examples, the teacher created a study session for his students before a test. I really like that idea. I think some kids would really benefit from this. I think what would be even better is for the students to come up with the study session information. If they produced it, it would be more meaningful to them. I would have to work out the technical aspects on exactly how that would work, but I think it is a possibility. This is definately making my brain churn!!!!