iTunes Podcasts

In "The Edible Schoolyard" podcast I thought it was really neat that they integrating gardening into the classroom and using organic materials. They were using hands-on activities to learn about soil and photosynthesis, along with many other things. The children were learning to work together and see live things grow from their hard work. The children were able to eat their won healthy food for lunch. The Edible Schoolyard program was started in order to provide better lunches for schools and the children seemed to enjoy eating the things they grew and cooked themselves. The students says that it gives them a warm feeling getting to provide for themselves. The children are the ones who make all of this happen.

In the "Night in a Global Village" podcast the students were sacrificing their status as privilged students in order to help the less fortunate children. Some students lived in refugee camps where they were not allowed to speak in English and had to live like the people who were less fortunate than themselves. The camp in Guatamala had plenty of water but the camp in Appalacia had no water so they had to bargain with the other camp to have water. It was freezing at night and the children were scrambling for resources for food and fire. The students realized they had to stop arguing amd work together to get things done.

Both of these podcasts were really neat. The one about the children growing and cooking their own food was cool because it taught the children real life skills but it also taught them about important science lessons. The hands-on activities seemed to be a good way to get the students interested. The podcast about the children living as less privilged children was interesting because it showed the students struggling like other children do every day of their lives. It allowed them to experience life in a whole new way and be able to appreciate the things they have and to take action to help the people who are less fortunate.

These podcasts would be great for me to use as a teacher. Podcast like these could help give me ideas to use in my classroom to make learning more intersting for my students. I think the students would be very intersted in the hands-on activities since todays society is more of a hands-on society. Children can learn better when they are seeing results of action rather than reading about others experiences. I could even show the podcasts in my classroom to let them get an idea about what I want them to do, or even watch them for information about the specific subject being taught.