During our subject, we have used Garageband on the Mac’s to create Podcasts. This program is very user-friendly and allows you to create podcasts with music in the background (from itunes) as well as voice effects. Amy and Michelle created a Podcast for their Learning Design assignment on Bullying. I thought this was a relevant issue for children and hearing the story of ‘Graham the Bully’ via the Podcast great. What made it more entertaining was the ability of changing Amy’s voice into a male’s using the Garageband software. Listening to a Podcast caters to different learning styles, the teacher is able to present information in a different form rather than presenting the usual worksheet and page of text to read. You could even ask children to close their eyes while they listen to the Podcast. I found Garageband easy to use as well as being fun, so therefore I could imagine primary school children really having fun and being creative with it.

When visiting Laura’s blog page I viewed a video which explained how the Interactive Whiteboard works. I haven’t actually used one of these myself, but have heard great things about them. I watched the video twice! I was so impressed with the technology as well as feeling a little ‘out of the loop!’ It’s incredible just how far technology has come since I was at school and it’s amazing the opportunities that students have today with the technology available. The Interactive Whiteboard allows teachers to create visually stimulating lessons which engages students. It would interest students as they would be learning through the technology some of them have at home as well as being able to access their homework online from home. However, this does present an area of concern – students from low socio-economic areas may not have access to the Internet or technological devices which would mean they could not participate in those particular tasks. Although this is not to say that these students could not become familiar with the technology during school hours. All in all, I think they are a great idea, it’s allowing education and technology to move forward and create new and effective devices for learning.