A case study and the TPCK / SAMR models.

Case Study 1.4: Talking books. 

In the UK there is an organization called EMTAS (Ethnic Minority and Traveller Achievement Service) that, in working with pre-school children with English as their second language, spotted a difficulty: they had under-developed speaking and listening skills.
To tackle this problem and help the kids' parents improve the situation, EMTAS chose 10 books for children and had them recorded by bilingual professionals using Mantra Lingua's Talking PENs, a site specifically designed for this type of work. They recorded readings and retellings of the books both in English and in the various native languages of the children. Each book was made available for parents to share with their kids.
The project was reported to be successful.

TPCK: Technology- Pedagogy- Content- Knowledge -- applied to my case:

- Content: the aim was to help these pre-school children improve listening and speaking in English, and reading comprehension as well.
- Pedagogy: books were recorded in both languages for mothers to work on with their children.
- Technology: online reading programmes were used for the recording of the talking books. Mantra Lingua is the site mentioned in the article.

Personally, I had never heard of Talking Books. I believe, since what we are aiming at is student autonomy in terms of technology, that it would be a good idea for us to have our students record not just stories but why not drama plays online! Then we could post the recordings on a class blog and share it with other classrooms in the world.