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"I've said before that listening is one of my biggest challenges when learning a language. My Speak from Day One approach to learning langauges, means I'm usually stronger at speaking than listening. With that in mind, I've collected over 50 resources to help Spanish learners improve their listening skills. I've organised this collection into five categories: Videos: Watching videos helps you understand body language and provides valuable visual cues for your listening practice. Podcasts and Radio: For covering a variety of topics and speaking styles, podcasts and online radio can't be beat. Music: Listening to music gives you a look at the creative and poetic side of a language. News: This provides you with more formal, standard use of the language, combined with contemporary topics. Lessons: It is helpful to listen to Spanish in a structured environment, especially when you are first starting out. These Spanish listening resources are for everyone, regardless of your level. So, let's get started!"

"This piece was actually sparked by an interview of Lady Gaga by Soledad O' Brien at the Born This Way Emotion Revolution Summit where Gaga stated, "It's time to stop telling learners what to do and start listening for we can do for them." One of those accepted practices, sadly, in most educational settings is that the teacher is the authority to be respected and listened to without question. Listening to students is not a practice that is often taught in teacher education programs. There is a current movement, in some circles, to promote and honor student voice.  But, and this is a huge but, if educators are serious about honoring student voice, they need to first learn how to listen, really listen to their students."

A collection of over 1,000 listening activites that students can view free via the internet. Most listening activites come with a downloadable MP3 audio file, transcipt and interactive quiz. ELLLO offers a variety of listening activities that each target a specific listening skill, need or interest.

"The BBC's Skillswise website offers lots of good activities for learning and practicing skills in language arts and mathematics. A section of the site that could be useful in a lot of classrooms is the speaking and listening section. The speaking and listening section contains subsections offering lessons and activities to develop a specific skill. Those skills are listening for specifics, communication skills, formal and informal speaking, and giving presentations. Each section has a short introductory video followed by a set of quizzes and interactive games in which students test their skills."

"t didn't take long for Michael Godsey, an English teacher at Morro Bay High School in California, to realize that his decision to use a public radio podcast in the classroom was a wise one. It wasn't any old podcast he was introducing to his classes. It was "Serial," the murder-mystery phenomenon produced by reporter Sarah Koenig of "This American Life," which already was transfixing a wide swath of the adult population. "Even if they weren't into it, I told them it was the most popular podcast of all time, and that was interesting," Godsey says. He needn't have worried. The podcast seized his five classrooms of 10th- and 11th-graders. "I had kids cutting other classes so they could come listen to it again," he says. "Kids who were sick, who never did their homework, were listening at home." Godsey is one of a growing number of educators who are using podcasts like "Serial" to motivate their classrooms and address education requirements set by the Common Core state standards. Improving students' listening skills is one of the essential components of the new education mandates, and using audio in the classroom can be an effective way to promote listening."

From Richard Byrne Free Technology for teacher, quoted below:Listen and Read - Non-fiction Read Along Activities Listen and Read is a set of 54 non-fiction stories from Scholastic for K-2 students. The stories are feature pictures and short passages of text that students can read on their own or have read to them by each story's narrator. The collection of stories is divided into eight categories: social studies, science, plants and flowers, environmental stories, civics and government, animals, American history, and community. Applications for Education Listen and Read looks to be a great resource for social studies lessons and reading practice in general. At the end of each book there is a short review of the new words that students were introduced to in the book. Students can hear these words pronounced as many times as they like. Listen and Read books worked on my computer and on my Android tablet. Scholastic implies that the books also work on iPads and IWBs"

As is required of all women in their 30s, I am in a book club. At the first meeting of this group, one poor unsuspecting woman mentioned that she had listened to that month's selection instead of reading it. That, the rest of the group decided together, is definitely cheating. Never mind that no one could exactly articulate how or why it was cheating; it just felt like it was, and others would agree. She never substituted the audiobook for the print version again (or, if she did, she never again admitted it). This question - whether or not listening to an audiobook is "cheating" - is one University of Virginia psychologist Daniel Willingham gets fairly often, especially ever since he published a book, in 2015, on the science of reading. (That one was about teaching children to read; he's got another book out next spring about adults and reading.) He is very tired of this question, and so, recently, he wrote a blog post addressing it. (His opening line: "I've been asked this question a lot and I hate it.") If, he argues, you take the question from the perspective of cognitive psychology - that is, the mental processes involved - there is no real difference between listening to a book and reading it. So, according to that understanding of the question: No, audiobooks are not cheating.

"High school English teacher Michael Godsey's favorite work by William Shakespeare is Hamlet. But a few years ago, he stopped teaching his students about the centuries-old classic in favor of a story that was unfolding in the fall of 2014: Serial, the podcast. Michael Godsey The story of Adnan Syed, Hae Min Lee and the community at Woodlawn High School captivated podcast listeners around the world, including Godsey. The story was so engaging, he made listening to Serial in real time an assignment for his students and eventually made podcasts a regular part of his English class. He also teaches with episodes of This American Life, RadioLab and Serial Season 2 that cover subjects relevant to the lives of students."

"Have you ever listened to a 5 year old tell about their work? Try listening to 25 of them. Daily. They have so much they want to tell and explain that I don't have enough ears to listen to it all. Their work is so detailed and there are like 40 bajillion things they absolutely must tell, and if you interrupt them even once, they must. start. over."

"Let's face it. All teachers talk, but not all teachers listen. I know, I know. You are probably thinking, "Well, students talk all the time, but they don't all listen." Granted, you may have a point there. But perhaps the root of the problem, a lack of honest and transparent conversations between teachers and students, can be discovered when Holmes' famous quotation is crossed with The RSA's animated video covering Daniel Pink's Drive. What results is a dry-erase animated video that took two sophomore students from Studio 113 and East Hall High School six hours to plan, draw, and fully articulate their concerns about the following educational concerns: Teachers' view versus students' view of school schedules. School systems' expectations of students versus students' own expectations of themselves. Purpose, application, and importance of certain curricula. The practice of not asking the most important people of all…the students. Ignoring successful educational models, such as Finland. Care to listen? The wise teachers already know it is the "privilege of wisdom" to click "play.""

Many of today's students are most comfortable using laptops, instant messaging, chat rooms, and cell phones to connect to friends, family, and persons with knowledge or content they desire in local communities and around the globe. Given the speed at which change is occurring, we must listen to our students and act to meet them where they want to learn. By The Way, they do want us to listen. Watch and see….

"This summer, I was introduced to sketchnoting and challenged to incorporate  the concept of sketchnoting as a means of note taking.  Sketchnoting is the process of creating a personal visual story while listening, reading, or recording an experience as it happens or on a later date. Sketchnoting brings in a variety of cognitive processes, increasing the connection between speaker and listener due to the engagement needed to listen intently while synthesizing the spoken word into drawings and short narratives.  I decided to to take the challenge seriously."

Do you love reading but don't get enough time due to your busy schedule and work? If you cannot read, you can listen to news and your favorite blogs on your PC, Android, iPhone and iPad using a service known as Vocalyse.

"Makers are a passionate bunch, and when we're not in the shop, we like to watch other people in the shop or listen to other people talk about being in the shop. Here, in no particular order, are five podcasts about makers and making that are absolutely worth your time."

"Sketchnoting, in its purist form, is creating a personal visual story as one is listening to a speaker or reading a text. I also believe the interactive notebook, which includes the process of taking "regular" notes" while listening to a speaker and later creating a sketchnote of the text notes, would also be considered sketchnoting. This page will provide links, ideas, tips,and research evidence dealing with the power of sketchnoting. If you are looking for a book on the topic, the seminal work is this book by Mike Rohde. "

"Have you ever had someone pass you their headphones to hear a song, and had your ears blasted by an outrageously loud volume level? Well, by default, anyone can crank the volume up on music played from an iOS device to 100%. That may sound like no big deal, but there are situations where listening to music that loud could potentially be problematic, leading to inattentiveness to the outside world or even theoretical hearing issues. This is particularly important for kids, who may not realize that the volume level is harmful. Thus, if you or your kids listen to a lot of music with headphones on from an iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad, you may want to consider setting a maximum volume limit for the Music app."

"I often wonder if what we see as teaching at professional learning events would be acceptable in a high school classroom. If the purpose of professional development (Pro-D) is professional learning, then what is our evidence that learning does, in fact, occur? Are we using effective teaching practices in Pro-D? Although Pro-D is evolving, the "Sit'n'Git" way of learning seems to still be alive and well in many conferences and workshops throughout Canada and the U.S. In the past five years, I cannot tell you how many times I've sat in a large conference room for a number of hours with hundreds of other dedicated educators and not been provided with the opportunity to even talk to the person beside me. People are spending hundreds and thousands of dollars to attend these events to listen to a series of lengthy lectures without the opportunity to network and wrestle with the presented ideas. I'm not opposed to a keynote address to start off the day with some inspiring, thought-provoking ideas; however, if there is no opportunity to take these ideas and move deeper, many of the thoughts that are initiated in the keynote get lost as I move on to the next session or listen to the next presenter. It's no secret that in order for deeper learning to occur, we must DO something with a new concept; we must apply new learning to take it from an idea to implementation. Our current typical model of Pro-D makes deeper learning a challenge and often only leaves participants with a few ideas that are unfortunately left on the shelf with the many glossy white binders from workshops of years past. At some point we need to stand up and say that a high volume of "Sit'n'Git" style of Pro-D is no longer acceptable and is an insult to those who have spent money, time, and effort to attend. While doing this, we also need to rethink the conference model and professional learning so that it better aligns with what we want to see in classrooms."

"Due to Khan Academy's popularity, the idea of the flipped classroom has gained press and credibility within education circles. Briefly, the Flipped Classroom as described by Jonathan Martin is: Flip your instruction so that students watch and listen to your lectures… for homework, and then use your precious class-time for what previously, often, was done in homework: tackling difficult problems, working in groups, researching, collaborating, crafting and creating. Classrooms become laboratories or studios, and yet content delivery is preserved. Flip your instruction so that students watch and listen to your lectures… for homework, and then use your precious class-time for what previously, often, was done in homework: tackling difficult problems, working in groups, researching, collaborating, crafting and creating. Classrooms become laboratories or studios, and yet content delivery is preserved (http://www.connectedprincipals.com/archives/3367)."