Volume 22

No. 2  November/December 2006

Podcasts a Resounding Success in Foreign Language Classes

James Cain

For almost two decades, MIT’s Foreign Languages and Literatures (FL&L) section has developed innovative learning environments and tools for the classroom (A la recontre de Philippe 1989, Star Festival 1995, Cultura 1997, Berliner sehen 1998, España de cerca 2002). Recent projects have relied on emerging Web technologies and multimedia capabilities. This past year, with help from the Language Learning and Resource Center (LLARC), FL&L began exploring ways to use podcasting and mobile media players such as iPods in foreign language teaching. (A podcast is an audio or video broadcast you can subscribe to via the Web, that automatically downloads to your computer or mobile device through a syndication mechanism called RSS.)

Since January, LLARC computer specialist Joshua Aresty has been supporting faculty and students in planning, creating, and using podcasts. Five professors in FL&L have now incorporated podcasting into the curriculum. Three of these – Tong Chen, Kurt Fendt, and Margarita Ribas Groeger – actively used podcasts this past fall.

Immersion
The common theme in all these projects is immersion – enabling students to hear and speak as much of a foreign language as possible in the course of a semester. Given the ubiquity of mobile devices (e.g., cell phones, mp3 players), students can now experience many types of media in nontraditional surroundings 24 hours a day. They can fit in a few minutes of language learning while riding the bus, walking the dog, or exercising in the gym. Podcasting, as a distribution medium, has changed the learning landscape, providing many more opportunities for immersion.

With the availability of free, authentically spoken material online and the ability to stitch together (“repodcast”) various podcast sources into a coherent narrative, LLARC has found that it can create effective instructional tools for coursework. Not surprisingly, new technologies also present new challenges. Some of the issues involved in using podcasting in courses include

• locating appropriate material and making it accessible
• organizing material into rational contextual chunks
• managing the accessibility of copyright-protected material.

Repodcasting
Tong Chen is a Lecturer in Chinese at MIT. He is using podcasting in several courses to prepare students for in-class presentations and assignments. Listening at their convenience, they gain a deeper understanding of class material. As background for a class
on the Chinese New Year, for example, students listened to a relevant episode in the course podcast from ChinesePod, a web site for learning Mandarin. This and other relevant material were shared using Google Reader.

In addition, Chen has recorded short paragraphs as podcasts. Students transcribe this audio material into Pinyin with tone marks. After they receive corrected transcriptions, students re-record the same material and send the new audio clips to Chen for another round of correction. Other listening assignments include filling in the blanks and true-false questions. Chen used a free service at blip.tv to upload course assignments. These, along with other feeds, were aggregated through Google Reader and cleaned up using Feedburner to create a podcast for the students.

Video to Go
Kurt Fendt is Research Director in FL&L and Comparative Media Studies. His upper-level German Culture, Media, and Society class is taught entirely in German. This fall, the course focused on recent German short film productions and radio plays. Much of the content came from recent film festivals and radio art programs which, due to copyright restrictions, were made available as streaming media through the Metamedia framework and on iPods provided by LLARC.

Students further subscribed to at least five German podcasts from a variety of public radio and TV stations and other sources. The primary goal was to explore emerging forms of media convergence and how traditional German media institutions seek to incorporate user-created content into new forms of programming.

Podcasts by Phone
For her Intermediate Spanish class, Lecturer Margarita Ribas Groeger wanted to give her students more opportunities to improve their fluency in speaking. Using student-created podcasts seemed like a good way to accomplish this task.

Looking for a simple way for students to create their own recordings, Groeger found an application, Gabcast, that lets the students post audio assignments to a class blog – on the WordPress site – by dialing a toll-free number and recording a message. This obviates the need to transform audio files to mp3s or upload them to the blog.

In addition to written assignments, Groeger asked students to describe orally a favorite location, comment on a film, or respond to a news article – in Spanish. These recorded messages were available for the rest of the class to listen to, opening up the possibility of online audio discussions. Other assignments, also using Gabcast, helped students with their pronunciation and intonation.

Even though all the students’ recordings were accessible on the Gabcast site, having a blog allowed Groeger and her students to add written comments, pictures, and other links to the audioposts.
At Groeger’s request, LLARC is investigating tools that would allow for an oral threaded discussion, in the style of a regular online forum.

Technology Watch
LLARC’s Aresty is continuing to explore tools and services that better organize podcast materials from different sources. For an extended look at these tools – also used in courses developed by FL&L Professors Ellen Crocker and Ian Condry – see “Projects in Foreign Languages and Literatures Using Mobile Media Units” in Ed Tech Times.

To check out some of the tools first-hand, refer to Surf Sites.

is&t Home |  is&t Back Issues |  Volume 22 |  No. 2