Karen’s Mashups

On this show, we’re listening to audio books.

Audio books are a powerful educational tool for building literacy and increasing the love of reading for readers of all ages. They have great applicability to special needs students and can help build literacy skills for all readers. (Specially classified students may qualify to receive audio versions of textbooks and other instructional materials free of charge.)

There are many free sources for audio books like LibriVox and Project Gutenberg, as well as commercial sources. One great place to get commercial audio books for free is from your public library. Many libraries now offer audio books as well as ebooks for checkout through their web sites. There are also free podcasts of serialized books delivered to you on a schedule provided by groups like Podiobooks.com.

As with all Internet content, it is recommended that you pre-screen individual shows before sharing them with students. (Some of the sites below do include explicit adult content, as well as children’s content.)

Included in this show are:
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 Show 15-Audio books [10:18m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

On this show, we’re going to listen to podcasts for school administrators. Time is at a premium for busy administrators and yet there is so much important information that is critical to their jobs. There are updates on policy issues, NCLB, state legislation, legal updates, personnel issues, funding, school improvement, and much more.

One way to stay on top of it all is with podcasts from education experts, like state DOEs, NSBA, TICAL, and others. These podcasts are a good way to stay on top of vital information while managing your time effectively.

At the bottom of this post is a list of state departments of education that have podcasts. If you know of others, let us know.

Included in this show are the following:
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 Show 14 - Administrators [10:11m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

In this week’s show, we’re listening to science podcasts. Science is a very rich area for podcasting, and there are many that have classroom application from elementary through adult levels. Some include teacher resource materials as well. Podcasts like these are a great way to get kids excited about science and motivated to learn more.

There are so many good science-related podcasts that we couldn’t include them all in this show. At the bottom of the list below are some additional science podcasts to check out. We’ll also be doing another show on science video podcasts in the future.

As with all Internet content, it is recommended that you pre-screen individual shows before sharing them with students.

Included in this show are:

(more…)

 

 Science Mashup [10:11m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download