Blogs, Podcasts and Virtual Classrooms

Ethan Todras-Whitehill:

He was introduced to blogging as an educational tool by Patrick Delaney, Galileo's librarian. Mr. Delaney also helped Mindy Chiang, a Mandarin-language teacher at Galileo, set up a blog for her Chinese-American and Chinese immigrant students to write about and post their experiences for the benefit of fifth and sixth graders from schools in Elk Grove and Santa Barbara, Calif., who were studying Chinatowns.

Ms. Chiang and Mr. Delaney were delighted to discover that the quality of the writing for the blog surpassed her students' previous work. Moreover, when Ms. Chiang had them record audio versions of their essays in English and Mandarin using school iPod's, the students' accents were vastly improved.

"It's pretty clear that they were worried about being embarrassed," said Mr. Delaney, noting that the essays were available to the students' families and Web surfers in China. "Having an audience compelled these kids to step it up a notch."

Still, some educators are not completely sold on the value of interactivity. "If interactivity becomes the fundamental basis of the educational process, how do we judge merit?" asked Robbie McClintock, a learning technologies expert at Teachers College of Columbia University.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at August 3, 2005 10:06 AM
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