Bill Pellowe
On February 19, 2006 I gave a presentation to Hiroshima JALT on iPods and podcasts. The official title was Two Presentations: (1) Using your iPod in the classroom; (2) Using podcasts - even without an iPod, though I changed the order around.
The two presentations also included demonstrations of classroom activities. Some are described below. Later on, I'll try to post a summary of all of the activities that were demonstrated.
Instead of a PowerPoint presentation through a computer, I used my iPod and gave a slideshow. The images I've linked to below are the images from the slideshows. Even though some of the images are much smaller than the rest, they all showed up as the same size in the presentation itself.
This demonstrated how to use video content to spark interest in a reading activity. First, a 4-second video was shown. In it, one man called another man "A coward, a liar and a thief." The other man punched him. Showing this video without any explanation sparks some interest.
I demonstrated a split reading activity, using three exerpts from online sources.
Get the video (select Download for iPod)
This was a funny video shown as an example of using videos to just talk about what happened, and maybe extend it to larger issues. An old woman is beeped at by an irate driver, so she hits the car with her handbag, causing the airbag to open.
You can structure many activities around movie trailers (Chartrand, 2005), such as asking factual questions (What kind of movie is it? Who are the actors?) or affective questions (Would you like to see this movie? Do you like those actors?).
You can use the same activities with movie introductions (in other words, the first few minutes of the movie). Movie introductions are cohesive; you see part of a story, with continuous dialog. I showed the first two minutes of the movie Hitch, a 2005 comedy romance starring Will Smith. I had recorded the clip with English subtitles on; this recording was made with Handbrake Lite.
I showed the music video of In This World (Moby, 2002) to illustrate how video content could inspire writing class lessons on essay structure (narrative, problem/solution, etc.). I got the video off of a DVD from RES magazine.
Here are some of the podcasts we listened to. These links will open up in iTunes, free software that's available for Windows and Mac.