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Here - EnglishAgenda - British Council

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2006) and are good revision tools (Evans, 2008), as they can be listened to outsideclass and repeatedly so, which is important to develop automaticity (Alonso et al.2005: 221). Other advantages of podcasts are that they allow for flexibility, they areportable and they allow students to learn autonomously (Edirisingha, Salmon andFothergill, 2007). Finally, podcasting is sustainable as it is a low cost, low barriertechnology (Rosell-Aguilar, 2007).The blogThe blog, for which I chose the easy-to-use Posterous platform which can be updatedvia email, served mainly as a delivery platform, which allowed students to access thepodcasts and transcripts in a fast and simple way to either read and listen online ordownload them to their computers or mobile phones for offline listening and reading.I also occasionally provided additional exercises and links to useful websites.Figure 2: Blog for the taxi English course on the Posterous platformAs can be seen in Figure 2, the blog had a search function (top right) so that studentscould find the topics they were interested in reviewing easily. I also tagged each blogpost/podcast episode with relevant keywords, which were automatically listed on theright sidebar of the blog under the heading ‘Tags’. Clicking on any of the tagsor keywords brings up a list of all the blog posts/podcasts with related content.The blog also allowed students to subscribe to it via RSS, which informs blog readersabout new blog posts or podcast episodes and allows them to see the content withso-called ‘aggregators’ or ‘RSS readers’ on the web, a computer, or on a mobiledevice without having to visit the website itself. I did not specifically explain thisfeature because my students knew when I would upload a new podcast. This featureis more interesting for those who follow or subscribe to several blogs and podcasts.136 | Blended learning: podcasts for taxi drivers

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