Spanish 2.0 Podcast

My podcast series provides Spanish teachers with authentic and current activities, highlighting some of the best (free) technology tools available. In a quick format, I share ideas that come from my own classroom, other Spanish teachers, bloggers, Edutopia, education news, and my EDTECH classes. In the final portion of each podcast, I will ask listeners to share their thoughts on a topic of interest. With constantly-evolving options, this podcast could be produced monthly and never run out of ideas!

My first episode is seven minutes long, and was created using Audacity, with sampled music from White Animal Sound (downloaded from SoundCloud at this link):

The podcast can be heard at the following links:

• https://www.dropbox.com/s/ltr5spufyt0hl19/Spanish2pointohPODCAST.mp3 
• https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxmCDsykl4ShZ2hIeGJaaFZpTUE/edit?usp=sharing 

This "pilot" episode presents the following resources:

• LyricsTraining
• Zambombazo
• Nearpod
• University of Texas Proficiency Exercises
• Edmodo

To create this podcast, I wrote a script, recorded it, sampled music, and edited each track so that it would flow together with the next segment. In this way, I demonstrated the AECT Standard 2.4, "Integrated Technologies", which are "ways to produce and deliver materials which encompass several forms of media under the control of a computer".

Throughout the production of this podcast, I also kept in mind the multimedia principles of "modality" and "redundancy". Clark and Mayer (2008) recommend that we present words as speech rather than on-screen text. In my podcast, I tried to summarize each resource that I presented in a way that was faster and more comprehensible than if the listener had simply stumbled across the same resource. I also introduce the podcast by referring listeners to the "website" where I would have the featured resources linked. This way they are free to simply listen and take in the information, with no cognitive interference.

References:

Clark, R. C., & Mayer, R. E. (2008). E-learning and the science of instruction: Proven guidelines for consumers and designers of multimedia learning (3rd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer.