Podcasts

A podcast is a series of digital media files that are released episodically and downloaded through web syndication, which is when website material is made available over multiple sites. Since Spencer and Liz are English majors, we picked the Poetry Foundation Podcast, which would be good because you would be able to hear the stressed and unstressed metric patterns in the poems. Also, we chose the Shakespeare podcast because Shakespeare can be really difficult to understand and hearing it would be easier than reading it because you could hear the voices and it would make it more interesting. For me, I would choose the FrenchPodClass. This could be very helpful because you would be able to hear the pronunciation of words, getting the students used to the sounds of the language and helping them a lot with listening comprehension.
It would be a good idea to use podcasts in the French classroom because there is an advantage to being able to hear words and conversations at normal speed, rather than the students just talking to each other, which would be really slow conversations. They need to get used to hearing and understanding normal spoken French, and the podcasts would help a lot with that. It would be a good idea to use podcasts in the English classroom because they could be used to help the students better understand the English language, and it would be especially useful for students learning English as a second language because it helps them hear how the words and phrases are pronounced and it's presented in a fun and upbeat way.

The links to the websites are found here:

http://www.frenchpodclass.com/

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/journal/audiolanding.html

http://www.shakespearebyanothername.com/audio.html