My purpose for creating the Blog and Podcast

Purpose of creating my blog:

I have created this blog to use it as a collaborative discussion space and as an extra-curricular extension of the classroom. Students can be encouraged to reflect in more depth, in writing, on themes discussed in the class. They can simply respond to blog posts and discuss topics through comments. It will also enable me to stay in touch with parents about what is going on in class. I can also get feedback or gather information through my blog.

But above all my main purpose of creating my own blog is for my ELT course ‘Computer Assisted Language Learning’. It is very interesting to me as well for my students. My own blog ‘Computer assisted language learning’ is an Edublog that makes it easy to organize groups by keeping everyone informed about my posts. It will provide extra reading practice for students and help to build a closer relationship between students in large classes.

Podcasting:

The term podcasting is very new to me and the idea of using a computer to create digital audio for speaking and listening tasks for students may seem difficult. But later I found it a bit easy – you can create podcasts in just a few minutes using a range of free websites and software. There are a huge number of podcasts freely available on the web that the students can listen to, but the focus of this article is on student- and teacher-created materials and activities.

Podcasting tools give students the opportunity to create audio texts that they can share with me or with each other or the online world. This act of creation gives students the opportunity to use language freely and creatively, and to listen to, self evaluate and improve their performance. It can enable me and my students to create mobile learning materials which they can access outside the classroom, at a place and time convenient to them.

PURPOSE OF MY PODCAST:

I’ve made up my audio podcast especially for my students. I’ll use it in my teaching. It will help me as a tool of my teaching technique. Motivating students to read can be quite challenging but I can increase the learning gains of reading activities by recording the texts as audio podcasts, so that students can hear an audio version alongside them. This can help them to hear the pronunciation of words they are reading. I can also ask students to record their own version of the text using podcasting tools. This is much more productive than reading aloud in class, as students can do it at home where it is less stressful and they have the chance to really listen to themselves, re-record and improve their own performance and develop their awareness of how they sound. I also get the chance to listen to the students without any classroom distractions.

My Topic of the podcast is “The Festivals of Bangladesh”. It will make people as well as my students know about my country, its festivals and culture. They will learn that how rich we are in our heritage and culture though it is a very small country. It will enable our young learners to learn about their own festivals and culture from their childhood.

I will use this podcast to enhance my students’ listening skill, reading skill and writing skill. For this I’ll give them fill in the gaps, tick the correct answer .For reading skill I’ll give them matching and for writing a similar unseen paragraph. Then I’ll check them and will give them a feedback.