MP3 are you for me?

This chapter in Brooks-Young book deals with the use of MP3 players in the classroom.  I would like to address some of the pros and cons to using MP3 players in the classroom.  One of the cons of using this is in your classroom is that you can't always control what students have on their personal MP3 players and you may run into students who don't have MP3 players.  Also in terms of technological capabilities most other forms of technology can do all the same things that MP3 players to do, so if you were looking into buying a classroom set of something you might not want to invest in something like this.  But thinking about the way that MP3 players could be useful in the classroom one must consider the portability of something like an MP3 player.  They are easy to cary around and their cost makes them a very realistic option for most classrooms.  Also there is a variety of applications that can now be added to many MP3 players that allow them to be tied into classroom actions very easily.  If a teacher wanted to create an audio file and send it out to the students the MP3 player would be a great way to do that.  You could even include a lesson in your class that allows you to record a set of directions and then have your students listen to the directions and complete actions depending on what they hear.

In trying to explore the existing file links in the book I found that quite a few of them were not very helpful because the site had moved or the link had changed.  Also some of them were a little harder to navigate than others such as the wikimedia commons site had a lot of information, but it could be a little overwhelming at times because you did have so much information to look through. I found that podcasts on itunes were the easiest ones to look through.  The information is pretty easy to go through and it is well organized.

I really liked the idea that they had about using MP3 players and podcasts in your classrooms to help students learn a language.  I think this a great application because it allows the students to listen to a native speaker and then repeat what they have just heard.  It allows them to go at their own pace and review the things that they need to review and move past the things that they don't necessarily need to focus on.

In terms of how much i'll use the information from this chapter in my future classroom, I think I will definitely use podcasts as an educational addition.  If you know where to look you can find author interviews or explanations of certain issues that you may be discussing in your classroom.  Also since I may be teaching in an ESL classroom I think it would be great to use to bring language to your students in a real way since you can't be with each student individually at the same time.  It will allow to have authentic language when you can't model it for them.  Also I think it would be a great way to bring different cultural experiences into your classroom and help your students to have a more global mindedness.  I'm not necessarily sold on the idea of MP3 players in the classroom, but I do really like the audio aspect that it adds into your classroom.