Cool tools for you! #1

In today's teaching environments we use the internet on our phones as apps or on a computer as programs or browsers.  There are so many different things we can do with each of these new resources.  For this week I choose to look at an audio tool called audioBoom, in this tool you can create an audio list or playlist with different kinds of things, you can share or save podcasts you have found, create podcasts of your own, listen to different stations/channels.  Each channel correlates to different topics of interest, there is a wide variety from news and business to technology and entertainment. This specific tool you can also create your own station by having a playlist of saved and even audios that you have created.  AudioBoom helps you to create your own recording and post it to the public. This is a free website, but if you pay you can upgrade different features to make things more public and recordings can be longer.

This tool could be easily used in a classroom to help provide a bigger explanation via someone else's perspective as well give students more open minded options for listening to someone else explain the material. As a teacher we could incorporate this into the classroom by having the students get onto your playlist every now and then to listen to you explain something on their own time. In certain classrooms you could even have the students create their own profile and have them create a tutorial of them explaining the course material.  It could be a good way to gauge the students comprehension of the lesson, as well as giving them a little more lean way to look for advice on what could help them to understand that lesson. TPACK is all about how to incorporate the different teaching methods with technology to help students in the classroom. Not only to help students but to help teachers know their content then help to translate that into teaching the students. For teachers you have to know your content in order to use the audioBoom, since  this is an audio recording you have to be able to talk about the particular subject, but also with finding other sources you must be able to make the connection between what they are talking about and then also the subject you are trying to teach.  As a teacher this is a good tool for teaching students since it will not be tool that will not take their full attention. It only incorporates listening, so you can also have them watch you do something on the board as they listen to the audio.

AudioBoom would be great to have your kids listen to a lecture outside of class if you did not cover something in class that you wanted too, or even use when you may not be in class that day.  For in high school you would get a substitute and it would be easy for a sub to pull your audioBoom up and have the kids listen to the lecture before having a worksheet. This would be an ideal situation for students and teachers to connect via none face to face interaction, or further explanations.  You could also even use it to draw student attention to subject matter by finding a news related audio.

 Here is how the record your own is set up. On the left is the first screen looks like and then the right is what it looks like after you have recorded something. Once you publish your recording you can then save and share it with any specific group or just the general public.

This is a good way to get your kids involved, it is so easy to set up and use. Once you have made a recording it is easy to share only with certain people, which makes it safe for use in the classroom. Using this app it would be easy for students to create their own voice, and profiles in here. They could share their thoughts and actually have their voices heard from using this app.  The navigation around the website is easy to use, very straight forward and simple. You could use this to challenge students to find another voice on the matter, or even to just find a podcast that talks about the same subject but maybe another side or different view.

This could be a fun and useful tool in the classroom if used to its full potential! Create your own profile and audioboom and explore all it has to offer you... Check it out: AudioBoom