Apple iPod Touch Getting Started - Page 32

Getting Started with iPod touch: 32 A guide for using iPod touch and iTunes for teaching and learning Enhancing Classroom Learning with iPod touch and iTunes There is no shortage of ways you can use iPod touch and iTunes to support teaching and learning. This chapter provides some example ideas for their use in the classroom. Supporting Language Acquisition iPod touch offers a wide array of engaging ways to assist students as they gain language skills. Students of all ages can benefit from the many language acquisition apps and resources available from the Apple App Store and iTunes Store. For example, younger students can have fun while learning grammar and letter sounds with animated apps while high school students can gain vocabulary expertise for college entrance exams. Students can use iPod touch to review flash cards for vocabulary in a book they are reading or for sight words for early readers, with the flashcards either ready-made or created by you or your students. Students who are learning a world language can download apps from the Apple App Store to practice the language or look up words with translator apps. Using resources available on iTunes U and the iTunes Store, they can listen to audio recordings, such as the news in Spanish, and watch videos to learn words and phrases, hearing the proper pronunciations. They can also record themselves using iPod touch or GarageBand to practice the language and improve their fluency. Using the lyrics and album art information in each audio file can further reinforce the learning of another language. For example, if the text of what a student is listening to is pasted into the Lyrics portion of the audio file, students can see and hear the content. Building Reading Fluency Struggling readers do not know what they would sound like as a fluent reader. You can use iPod touch or GarageBand to record students as they read a passage, then edit the recording in GarageBand by eliminating pauses and miscues so that the student sounds as fluent as possible. Send the edited recording to iTunes and sync with an iPod touch. The student can listen to himself or herself reading naturally-that recording then becomes the bar the student strives for when reading aloud.