Podcasting as the Newest Teaching Assistant in Today’s Classroom

Walk down any street, through any mall or into many schoolyards and the picture will be primarily the same—students of all ages walking around with wires coming out of their ears. In the past, students could always be found carrying portable CD players. The ever-present toy of today is the iPod, MP3 player or cell phone equipped with an MP3 player. Children today are hooked on technology. According to Lydia Lum (2006), one of the common sights on college campuses is iPod’s characteristic white earbuds nestled in the ears of the students. Education is placed into a situation where adjustments must be made to keep up with the changing scene. In an effort to address technology in the classroom, podcasting has entered the world of education.
For years, teachers have taken advantage of audio and video streaming by using such sites as www.unitedstreaming.com which is a product of Discovery Education. Now, podcasting is rapidly increasing in popularity as a new teaching tool for the classroom. Charles Doe (2007) seems to feel that this technology is filling the educational arena nearly as fast as it entered the technology mainstream because it allows students and teachers to easily share information.What exactly is podcasting? “Podcasting is an automated technology that allows listeners to subscribe and listen to digitally recorded audio shows” (Flanagan & Calandra, 2005). The term podcasting has entered the world as a combination of the terms iPod, the music player from Apple, and broadcasting (Ralph & Olsen, 2007). Basically, since students of today are rapidly becoming more auditory learners, the easiest way to deliver information to them is to place it on an everyday tool that the students are familiar with using. This does not mean that every youth and teacher in America should run out and buy an iPod. The material can be downloaded to any MP3 player type device including phones with MP3 capabilities, or listened to on the computer (Ralph & Olsen, 2007). Many libraries have also planned for this. The only necessary expenditure at this point is your own set of ear phones.

The Destructive Effect of Chatspeak on Standard English Usage

In every generation, the youth of the day have always created their own version of slang. During the 60s, it included words such as groovy. The 70s became cool. In the 80s, things were like totally rad. The 90s brought about the fact that people, clothes, and activities were da bomb. After the new millenium, technology became the determining factor about everything. Everyone had a computer connected to the internet and a cell phone.
Today, the most controversial version of slang is not a spoken word, but a typed word. Today’s adolescents and young adults have become caught up in what is known as chatspeak. Most of the people today communicate through cell phones. Teens have discovered that they can use their phones without getting into trouble by having the phones up to their ears. Instead, the young people simply type their messages to each other. It is easier to hide you phone while doing this in class. Because the teens are fighting against when typing their messages, they have developed a code. This is as entirely new language. The problem is that students don’t use standard English. They spell the words in special ways and use numbers and symbols for word.

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