When champions of online education start talking about the web opening up a whole new world of ideas, they aren't kidding. It's a pretty fair bet that just mucking around libraries, I would never have stumbled across the Goethe Institute (or Goethe-Institut). But in its online manifestation, this promoter of German cultural exchange even publishes in English. For me, that's gut.
Although the audience in question is children, a recent post on its website discussed audiobooks' use in the classroom. A scholar at Germany's Institute for Applied Children's Media Research makes a pretty good case: "they can be used over and again in the same quality. This can benefit above all pupils who haven’t grasped everything the first time round, and who are then able to go over things again. In this respect the use of media differs from authentic person-related lessons: they are not dependent on moods or daily form."
Audio's ability to enable easy review is a benefit I've mentioned often in correspondence and conversations with publishers. But I hadn't really considered Professor Stang's realization that audiobook delivery ensures presenting key material by people at the top of their games. Decent narrators will always go back to re-record things so run-on sentences don't sound that way, and they'll fix their mis-readings so confusing presentations never reach students' ears in the first place. (Assuming, of course, that the book itself makes some sense.)
Audio will never replace really good teachers, because it's a one-way communication. But it sure can fill in for boring fossilized lecturers!
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