Preferred Partner Highlight: Listenwise
The Vision
The idea of Listenwise started when I (Monica) was a reporter at WBUR, the public radio station in Boston, and was reporting on education, specifically the adoption of the Common Core. At that time, I had two children who were always forced to listen to the news on public radio every morning and afternoon because that’s all I played in our home. One day my daughter asked a very good question about a news story that I thought she wasn’t even listening to. I thought the content was over her head, but I was wrong. I decided to go into her school and ask her teacher why she doesn’t include public radio in her curriculum. I knew of other news outlets that are in school such as Time magazine and The New York Times. “Where was public radio?” I wondered.
When I learned it was too hard for teachers to find the right public radio stories and align them to the curriculum, I thought, I can do that. I know how to source the best public radio stories. That’s how I created the first lessons on Listenwise, by pairing up with teachers at my daughter’s’ school. A few months later I quit my job as a reporter in public radio and applied and was accepted into the Learn Launch edtech business accelerator.
One of the most important things I have learned is that Listenwise has many more applications in educational settings than I first thought. One teacher of English language learners reached out to me to say she loves using our selected public radio stories with her ELL students. I wanted to learn more so I asked if I could come to her class and watch her teach. It was a revelation. While I thought Listenwise would be best suited for social studies, ELA and science teachers looking for engaging aligned stories, I didn’t think it could be used for language instruction. Now we have worked with experts in ELL to add scaffolded supports for language learners and that has opened up the world of English language learners, because of the feedback we’ve received from our teacher users.
The Product
As a free and Premium product, we are always trying to evolve and stay up-to-date with what teachers and classrooms need or want. Our free product provides engaging, emotional, high-quality public radio stories that are very relevant and current. We try to leverage content that teachers want to use in their classroom and always are happy when teachers reach out to us and share stories so that we can continue to provide content that they use and like. Listenwise Premium, is also always evolving with teacher input- we just release some new product updates for back-to-school based on teacher feedback we have received and this fall we are working towards a game changing new feature – Stay tuned for this big feature release! Right now we are in beta testing, but we are excited to share new features with you all.
You can never predict what the future holds, so follow along with us on Twitter @listenwiselearn to make sure you keep up with us! More about Listenwise at listenwise.com.
The Testimonial
We reached out to Benton Lewis, a 9th & 11th grade English teacher from Fresno, California, and asked him about his experience using Listenwise in his classroom.
How did you learn about Listenwise? I learned about Listenwise through a colleague who helped me find examples of listening skills programs, websites, or technology based tools. We got our first set of SBAC results back and saw that the scores we had on listening skills were dreadful… 16.5% scored at level or above (a 3 or 4). I found a few sites on my own (that were not very user friendly) when I was shown the Listenwise site and immediately knew it was something I could use.
How do you utilize Listenwise in your classroom? What are the benefits? I teach 9th and 11th English and Listenwise goes very well with cross-curricular lessons. When I teach The Odyssey unit to my 9th graders, I use the lesson on “Greek Influence on Modern Culture” as practice and background information. I do the same for the Of Mice and Men unit, when we look at lessons like “The Dust Bowl During the Great Depression” or “Introduction to the Great Depression”. When I teach my 11th, I have used a lesson like “Founding Fathers and Slavery” when we read the Declaration of Independence. I have also used “Witches through History” and “The Red Scare and Joseph McCarthy” during our The Crucible unit. The benefits have shown through a large increase in our overall scores for listening skills (up to 37.8% on the SBAC in our second year). And, we only found and integrated Listenwise on a limited basis from October through April of last year.
The beauty of Listenwise is that it simulates the exact kind of interface that is used on the SBAC test. Also, if you want to add a quiz, questions, graphic organizers, or other tools to help or assess, Listenwise is very user friendly and has most of those options already present (in one form or another). Students can even upload their answers entirely online and practice typing responses as they would on the SBAC. Half the challenge is getting students aware of, and comfortable with, the interface. Using Listenwise definitely prepares them for the way the SBAC is setup.
What would you say to another teacher who may be hesitant about trying a new #edtech product in their classroom? My advice to any teacher who is hesitant to use tech in their classroom is this: Listenwise (especially) makes it easy to go as bare bones or complicated as you want to make it. You don’t even need to have them bring their own headphones, or use laptops or phones or their own tech; you can project the lesson yourself and guide them through it. It is as easy as registering and then searching for lessons that apply to your overall lesson or curriculum. You can assign a lesson to a whole class (with quizzes, short responses, multiple choice, longer writing prompts, or whatever you want to add), or you can just listen to it with the whole class and model and discuss listening skills to them. Easy peasy.
If you have any questions, email us at info@pledgecents.com.
