Title: In Some Schools, iPods Are Required Listening
Author: By WINNIE HU
Published: October 9, 2007
The New York Times Education
Summarized by: Amy Marnell
This article talks about how ipods, although banned in most schools, can actually be used as instructional tools. I chose to read and summarize this article mainly because last year the middle school I work at decided to allow students to listen to their ipods only during a specific period per day. The main reason this decision was made is because a science teacher had the students make incredible podcasts to summarize reproduction. Our 7th and 8th grade students take living environment and take the biology regents in 8th grade.
Back to the article, a school in Hudson County called José Martà Middle School has banned the use of ipods. However, ipods have been handed out to ESL students in order to learn vocabulary and sharpen their skills by using popular songs. The teacher downloaded a mixture of popular music and typed out all the lyrics. She then deleted the nouns, verbs, and adjectives which in turn forced the students to fill them in and describe their meaning. She also downloaded the Harry Potter series so students can listen to this and added a recording device to the ipod so students can practice their pronunciation.
As a result, students are moving out of bilingual classes with the use of this digital device after one year as opposed to an average of four to six years. I think this teacher is brilliant for launching this and this is just another way for teachers to reach students and let them know that we value what is meaningful to them and we care what they think. This is an example of the NCLB working along with teachers and schools in order to help all students succeed.
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1 comment:
It sounds like this teacher really looks for the most innovative ways to use technology to help the literacy skills of her students. Using the ipod could be a great tool for literacy, especially the way that she is using it. Most schools do have a policy banning ipods because students listen to music during instruction and it has nothing to do with what is going of. Using ipods could be a wonderful tool, but at the same time could give other students the opportunity to listen to non-eduactional things on it which may hinder learning. We must get over this and incourgae it as an educational tool because it really can be helpful.
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