THE BARKING COWS PODCAST
The students have an space where they can talk about the subjects that they like and enjoy talking about while learning and discovering their talents for production, investigation, and fun. The name was inspred by the meme culture from the internet that is something that is really close to the daily life of the students.
A podcast can be defined as an audio file that can be listened to from a computer, smartphone, tablet or other player. Its download is free, so they are available to anyone, and have extremely varied and changing themes so it is a great educational resource to develop oral skills.
The key is that, in addition to listening to them as a learning resource, students are encouraged to create them. If we think of podcasting as another way of transmitting information (from the teacher to the students) it loses its main didactic potential. In fact, the podcast, like any other digital artifact, is really useful for learning when it is the students who produce it. And any content is susceptible to being treated. In this sense, the possibilities are as varied as creativity and technology allow. From the recording of interviews with experts or debates, to its use as a learning diary, where students can narrate their learning process and reflect on it.
The benefits offered by the use of podcasts are related, above all, to the development of oral skills. If it is taken into account that the only element, they have for their creation is the voice, their potential to work on language skills is more than evident. Also, those related to languages other than the native one.
The use of audio content, which the student has to analyze and work on, or even creating their own, enhances autonomous and personalized learning. As a consequence, carrying out these processes leads the student to have to make an effort to create a coherent and effective product. In addition to helping, you develop digital skills.
There is evidence that podcasts have a multitude of educational benefits. Actives for the improvement of the different aspects that make up the oral competence of a language, such as pronunciation, intonation, fluency and conversational courtesy strategies, to name a few.
One of the advantages of podcasts is that it takes very little technology to produce it: a mobile phone is enough, although if you want to improve the result, you can complete the kit with affordable resources such as USB microphones and audio editing applications such as Audacity.
It’s time to share the creations. And portals like Ivoox allow you to upload audios without having to worry about copyright, in case the student wants to use the music of their favorite artists to create their podcasts. “On the other hand, being an audio content and not video, it allows us to safeguard the privacy of the students who create this type of content. It is much less delicate to disseminate this type of content than those in which images of the student appear.
