PodcasterCon, a free, open-forum event, is scheduled to take place this Saturday in Chapel Hill, NC. There is a session on podcasting as a teaching/learning strategy. From the session wiki page:

New information and communication technologies are providing children with unprecedented access to the world they are learning about. Classroom walls are becoming invisible through the Internet and the information it causes to flow. What are the potentials of using podcasting to give voice to that world and to give voice to our students? What are the barriers, and what are the key entryways into leveraging global voice in our neighborhood schools? Join us in discussing the potentials and avenues of podcasting in the classroom.

(Link via Jean-Claude Bradley.)

from: http://syndicateblog.petersons.com/wordpress/
index.php/podcastercon-this-saturday/

This is an excerpt froma longer article on teaching strategies:

Using ‘Question Architecture’ to Avoid Awkward Silences

The differences in students’ level of participation from class to class “can be maddening,” wrote Henry Kamerling, an associate professor of history at Queens University of Charlotte. But what to do? How can professors create momentum in class when the question that is part of a “carefully-crafted, well prepared lesson plan” prompts only “dead silence.”

Kamerling outlined a series of strategies based on what pedagogy experts call “question architecture.” The approach is designed to engage students at all academic performance levels, to break out of the dry lecture format, and to encourage students to gradually grapple with more difficult questions. A professor might start with a series of questions that are primarily factual, then involve the class, and then pose more difficult questions.

For example, a session on the American Revolution might start by asking students to name all of the causes they can think of, while having a student jot them all down on a board in front of the class. Because there are tons of “right answers,” lower performing students can get involved. Asking one or more students to write the answers on a board in front of the class sends students the message that they are participating in the teaching, and creates a “controlled chaos” in which students may be more comfortable offering ideas.

Then, Kamerling said, the professor would shift to higher level kinds of questions — grouping together the various answers into categories and finally posing larger questions of what the revolution was about.

from: http://insidehighered.com/news/2006/01/06/teaching