Loisath-My ICT Journey

Audio e-Learning – Helping students make sense of their learning!

How often do we ask students to rewrite information in their own words only to find what they have written is nonsensical or merely a rearrangement of the original text with some synonyms thrown in (the clever ones can do this with the online thesaurus) ? It is my experience that students are reasonably good at collecting information but much poorer at making sense of it. They can travel three quarters of the distance on their inquiry-learning journey but fail to fully complete it. They struggle to use the information they have collected to reconstruct the meaning for themselves. They might appear to have done the work but have not really answered their query or created new knowledge for themselves. However, when you ask students to paraphrase or read what they have written they will admit that they are not sure what it means or that it does not make sense. Gordon Wells emphasizes the importance of speech and writing as a means of building and clarifying knowledge.

“the fact that the processes of thinking, such as categorizing, hypothesizing, reasoning, and evaluating, are not only realized in language, in the sense of being made manifest in speech and writing, but also actually constructed and improved through its mediating means.” (WELLS, 2001)

• Students speak before they write and if we really want to know what they are thinking then the first form of communication should be oral especially for primary students who are still in the early stages of developing their writing skills.
• Finding the words to verbally report the meaning is different to finding the words to make a written report.
• Writing is more difficult than speaking and so students are much more likely to write things that do not make sense than they are to say them.
• When they speak they get immediate feedback by listening to themselves and realize that what they have said doesn’t make sense or that they don’t understand the material enough to articulate it.

While planning the curriculum for students in ICT my goal was to have the final product a spoken one so that students were more likely to access and construct information and new knowledge. I wanted to have students more involved in the process by making the realization of new information spoken not just written.

Two examples of Audio e-Learning in Practice

1. PowerPoint with Oral Commentary

My first exercise was to have grade five and six students reflect on what they had found out in their first inquiry unit. The students had completed a PowerPoint with information about their learning styles (visual, auditory or tactile/kinesthetic) and in which ways they were intelligent according to The Theory of Multiple Intelligences (Wikipedia) defined by Howard Gardner. They had used online surveys to gather the information and wrote about the results on the slides, noting whether they thought the results were an accurate reflection or not. The final requirement was to create a verbal commentary as a summary of the information on each slide, to enhance the information presented, but not read it word for word to the audience. The students created a series of short sound files and inserted them onto the appropriate slide to play automatically within the slide show.

Technically this was not difficult, but it did challenge a number of students in terms of making the final step in their learning, constructing knowledge for themselves from the information and linking it to their experiences.

The final product with the verbal commentary was insightful and much more engaging for the audience who are usually teachers and other students. Listening to the presentations quickly gave the teacher a clear indication of the student’s critical thinking skills and at which stage of the Bloom’s Taxonomy they are operating. (CHURCHES, 2008)

2. Radio Show

The students at my school have a live one-hour radio show on a community radio station each week (97.7FM 3SER Wed 2-3pm). All students in grade 5 and 6 who want to present on the radio have the opportunity to do. The show involves script writing, collaboration with peers (they work in teams of 4), careful selection of music and practice to deliver their scripts with a credible and interesting voice.

The program has certain elements that students are expected to talk about such as their interests, a community oriented subject and a link to the current classroom inquiry unit but it can include other original material such as stories, poems, songs etc. The radio show provides a genuine audience for their work. The focus is clearly on their oral expression and the digital recording equipment is the key to helping students evaluate and improve their skills.
The students take advantage of every opportunity to interview special visitors to the school. They use the pre-recorded interviews on their show and if applicable spend time editing and adding sound effects or music to enhance the interview. Creating surveys and analyzing the results to share with their radio audience has been another popular topic for some students. This is a very powerful learning experience integrating a number of key curriculum areas with genuine purpose, written (script) and verbal (presentation on radio) articulation of results and authentic audience.

The final element of that has been added this semester is that the students select a 2-3 minute interval of their show to Podcast to iTunes . Students are excited that their work is available in the “real world” and that their parents and friends can download their personal podcast.

As the year went on it became easier to see how to add an audio component to the lessons. More importantly it became clear that students needed to make audio files as a part of their everyday work to help them develop literacy and thinking skills. There are more examples of audio e-learning on our school blog from various grade levels using a variety of programs.

WELLS, G. (2001). Action, Talk and Text: The Case for Dialogic Inquiry. In G. WELLS, Action, Talk and Text: Learning and Teaching Through Inquiry,. Teachers College Press.

Dueling Mics via Flickr by roland

Photo : students completing a radio show in our own studio

I have always been a strong believer in the importance of students’ oral language as a key step in their literacy development and in clarifying their thinking while learning. I also believe, as teachers, we tend to gloss over its importance, by not giving enough time in the school program for specific oral language development. For example the Early Years Literacy Program (used in Victorian primary schools in Australia) prescribes an hour for reading and an hour for writing every school day for students in grades P -4. Where is the dedicated time for developing oral language, especially in the early years?
Last year I was the full time ICT teacher for students in P-6 at my school and in an effort to improve my own skills in planning for oral language development I took every opportunity to introduce an audio aspect to the ICT lessons that I taught.
Below are some examples of how to integrate audio in the classroom.

Audio e-Learning and the Curriculum

It is a logical step that we should be spending more time developing students oral language skills if we want them to be good at using language to help process thinking at higher levels. I have selected the major teaching emphases for speaking recommended by the West Australian First Steps Oral Language Program to show how we can implement a digital audio e-learning program for students.
The West Australian First Steps, Oral Language Developmental Continuum was designed to provide teaching strategies to ensure that students achieve the National English Outcomes set out in the National Profiles. (EVANS & ALLEN, 1996).
The list below features an overview of the aspects of oral language that should be developed specifically to improve the student’s ability to use the speaking component of language. The features are common to all phases of development but of course the level of performance and material would become more complex as students progressed.

Major Teaching Emphases (EVANS & ALLEN, 1996)

Components, which are common to all phases of development.

• focus on language structures and patterns through songs, chants, rhymes and stories and the aesthetic features of writing
• develop student’s ability to adjust their language to suit particular purposes, audiences and situations – structure experiences that challenge students to select and use different styles of language to suit a range of audiences and purposes
• develop and extend student’s use of vocabulary in different contexts -promote the use of subject-specific vocabulary
• help students to give and receive simple explanations, information and instructions – help students to give and respond to increasingly complex explanations and instructions

Audio e-Learning

Examples of how Audio e-Learning can enhance learning

• Record and listen to students – Share with the grade, Podcast those that are popular and publish to web page. (Arrowhead Elementary School) is a great example
• Audio e-learning is the ideal way for students to practise language to suit particular audiences. Recorded can work can be shared with the grade, parents, year level, school level, published to the web and or used on a Radio Show. Recording allows for the students to receive feedback and to polish their performance.
• When students create a commentary for their Inquiry learning topics, they have the opportunity to demonstrate the use of subject specific language in context.
• Screencasting using simple recorders that come with Interactive whiteboards (Notebook Recorder is part of the SMARTBoard software) or free software downloaded from the internet such as “Jing” is an great way to create a procedural text that has a visual and verbal element. Sceencasting records all the movement on the computer screen while it records the student’s oral commentary. Eric Marcos’s Mathtrain website is an excellent example of screencasting.  (Mathtrain.tv)

There are many ways that technology can help students develop the components of oral language. The list I have provided is not exhaustive and is growing everyday as technology improves. It can be as simple as attaching a microphone to the computer and recording a sound file for a PowerPoint presentation or as complex as blogging with a mobile phone (Year 10 Agriculture).  Photostory and Voicethread are both excellent, free, software where the students’ voice can be the main form of communication.

Talk to Me -Flickr photo via Daniel F. Pigatto

Microphone – Flickr photo via sparetomato