Screen Recording

I love the idea of using screen recording for teaching the research project. Students always have a hard time looking for the information for citations. Screen recording would help with this in a number of ways:
1) Accessing Purdue OWL research pages,
2) Reviewing MLA and APA format,
3) Accessing school research databases,
4) Examining different articles within the databases to find things like author, title, and date of publication, and
5) Creating PowerPoint slideshows for research presentations.

Students are becoming more visual learners. This technology will be a good way to hook them and to assist those who need repeated instructions.

Flickr

One of the ideas for using Flickr I shared in the class discussion blog was using it to post photos of some of the sites I saw in England for my English Lit. class. I took numerous pictures of the Globe Theatre and Stratford-Upon-Avon. They give a bit of context to Shakespeare's world. What would it be like to stand with the rest of the groundlings to see a Shakespeare play? What does his gravesite look like? Other places where I took photos included Canterbury, Oxford, Bath, and the Lake District. Students might get a real feel for why many of the early Romantics were inspired by nature if they could see some of what those poets saw. These visuals could be compelling tools for the classroom.

YouTube Videos

Here's a partial list of YouTube videos that I think could be useful in class:
Introduction to Renaissance, Great Chain of Being, and Scansion -- A short humorous introduction that previews many of the elements discussed in the Renaissance unit.

Hamlet: To Be or Not To Be - Richard Burton and Ethan Hawke. I think it would be productive to have students compare and contrast two performances of the same lines. The Richard Burton scene is from a 1964 play; the Ethan Hawke scene, the 2000 movie.

Shakespeare: A Small Rewrite -- A hilarious sketch from Comedy Relief in which Hugh Laurie as Shakespeare endures requests of a rewrite of Hamlet from his producer played by Rowan Atkinson. This is one of those treat videos that students will really appreciate after studying the play.

Podcasting

Right now, I see podcasting as mainly a teaching tool, another access point for students to receive information. This could include such things as lectures and project instructions. I think I would want these to be redundancies, though, rather than primary tools because some students may lack appropriate access to the podcast technology. On my wiki, I downloaded a podcast that could serve as the first part of my mini-lecture on the opening unit in English Literature. I could also see using podcasts to break down steps in projects like the research paper. In relation to the brevity of the wiki podcast, I think I would want to continue to limit my podcasts to no more than 10 minutes because 1) students' attention spans aren't very long and 2) shorter podcasts are easier to produce.

I can also see using podcasts for outside resources. The Education Podcast Network, for example, has links to series devoted to dramatic readings from and lectures on Shakespeare and to creative writing tips. I can see these resources being helpful to students. Maybe some sites would include interviews with famous authors, professors, or other experts.

The one area of podcast utility that I'm not completely sold on yet is having students podcast. It would seem to me that almost any projects involving student podcasts would have to be creative group projects like putting together a dramatic reading as a radio play. I suppose, depending on the class, that some students might be capable enough to podcast their own interviews with experts.

In any case, I'm sure that the use of podcasts in the classroom will continue to grow.

Other language arts podcasting resources:
Literature Podcast Directory
Writing Podcast Directory
Books of Our Time

General podcasting resources:
Apple Education Podcasting
Podcasting in Education - University of Minnesota
Podcasting in Education - Shaun Else