I have given the students listening assignments in the past through Moodle. I wanted to compare Moodle to Podbean as the hosting location of my future podcasts.
Moodle Advantages:
- can track who listens to the file
- download or just open the attachment
- can attach questions or written response to the listening section
- password protected if necessary
- possible to seperate content by grade
Moodle Disadvantages:
- limited size of attachment
- Moodle frequently ‘under maintance’ or just unavailable
PodBean Advantages:
- visually pleasing and easy to figure out
- RSS feed enabled
- students could leave comments about the podcast so it could be improved in the future
- download the file or just play from site
- more reliable than Moodle? Do not know yet
PodBean Disadvantages:
- limited in the amount of content I can upload for free
- no visible way to separate content between multiple grades … unless I create a separate podcast blog
- another site I would have to convince the parents to allow students to use
- no control over links to other users content, it could be questionable
Flickr derrickkwa
This is going to be the trial year when I check out both options in more detail. I will get feedback from the students. I suppose there is nothing wrong about sometimes using one and sometimes the other. I would end up having links from Moodle to the PodBean podcast anyway. But it would be a nice work around for the times when Moodle is down, I could just provide the students with the direct web address to navigate to.
Idea for the future: Weekly word challenge. Have a word that is connected to the content, but not a word they would have seen previously. Just based on the word being said twice and an example sentence, they would have to find the word in a Spanish-English dictionary. All they would have to do to turn in the assignment is write the correct word in English.
This would force them to listen to the pronounciation of the word and listen for the individual letter sounds. Even if they are off by a letter or two, they would be able to find it in a dictionary. I would not have them submit an answer every week, but they would have to complete it 4 times during the marking period. This is for my 8th graders.
Once my 6th graders learn the alphabet, I will spell random words. They will have to correctly spell the word and use a dictionary to find the English definition. The dictionary skills still need practice so they can be successful in the higher Spanish classes.
