Digital Audio

I truly believe that digital audio is the new way in our classrooms. As mentioned by our teacher in one of our forums, a lot of our teaching is based on talking and listening, but are we being heard? I have this argument with husband many times when I ask if he is listening to me and he responds with "yes I hear you!" and my response is always "you may hear me, but are you listening?" We could ask our students the same questions. Even as adults we often tune someone out as they are speaking, we may hear that the person is talking about IEP's or diversity in the classroom, but are we truly listening? Often when we are not listening it is because our minds are elsewhere. "Did I lock thr door when I left this morning?", "My daughter has a doctors appointment at 3pm today.", "When are report cards due again?", and the list goes on. Our students maynot have the same thoughts as us, but they too become distracted.

With digtial audio, this gives our students the opportnity to listen over and over again to the same thing until it is clear. As we all know, many if our students need more repetition than others but it can sometimes be difficult to manage with 1 teacher and 20 students. With digital audio it allows them the freedom of repetition of and when needed.

The new technology could do so much for us as teachers and for our students, now the hard part is trying to find the time and the various ways to integrate it.