Gabcast to the Rescue?

This past weekend Devon and I presented about Google Apps at the Arizona English Teachers’ Association. The first sign that we were the technogeeks at the conference was that we were happily typing away during the keynote address. I’m sure people were irritated by us; however, we were productive. I got my blog about the keynote up by the end of the keynote itself. And by the time we walked over to the building where we were presenting, we had figured out a way to adapt the oral activity for an online class.

The adaptation...?

Dr. Chin’s activity had students combining short, single concept sentences and speaking them aloud. Not only did this help them develop the ability to construct complex sentences, speaking it aloud made students pay attention to style, tone, and pacing. I was captured by the combined learning outcomes and the multimodal pedagogical method. I was bound determined not to lose the oral component when trying to convert this activity for an web-based course.

The solution...?

At this point I think an easy solution is Gabcast. Gabcast would be a quick, easy, and free method. The activity would be something like: Take the following five short, single topic sentences and combine them into a complex sentence. Record the complex sentence out loud in Gabcast. Do this four more times, constructing four different complex sentences based on the same five basic sentences.

• I own a computer.
• The computer is tiny.
• The computer has a sticker on it.
• The sticker is blue and yellow.
• I use the computer at meetings.

Listen to three other classmates’ five complex sentences. Rank them based on which sentences you like best. Describe how and why you ranked the sentences in the manner you did. Consider tone, style, pacing, etc.

October 10 2007 | Posted in AETA