What have I learned about podcasting?
Wow! I have learned that there is a whole new world out there that I really didn't know existed. I thought podcasts were just a way for me to listen to people talking. I didn't realize all the video podcasts that are available--both professional and amateur ones. Now that I know what to look for, there are so many available. I also didn't think about creating my own podcasts or having my students create one. I didn't even know that you could subscribe to a podcast, but now I have subscribed to several through iTunes. I even tried making a podcast through GarageBand.
Podcasts allow you to:
- download FREE audio and video files
- select only the files you wish to download
- subscribe to them, so new content is automatically sent to you when it becomes available
- use iTunes to access them
- download files to your ipod or other media devices
Relevance of podcasts to me as an educator:
There is a whole world of podcasts that can be used in the classroom. There are podcasts designed for teachers and for students. For my world geography classes, I will use Anderson Cooper 360 Daily and CNN Student News podcasts for current events in my classroom. For my animals of the world class, I will use the Animal Planet Video Podcast and the Discovery Channel's Dangerous Encounters Podcasts to show short 3-10 minute videos about a wide variety of animals. I looked briefly at iWeb for posting podcasts, but I'll need to learn more about it. I also played around with creating a podcast on GarageBand, but I also need to learn more about it before I feel comfortable having my students create one. For my own professional development, I have subscribed to The Tech Teachers podcasts.
My postings in the Ed 632 Google discussion group about podcasts:
1. Librivox is a site that has audio podcasts of books, short stories, and poetry. It can be used for individual listening or for a classroom. It loaded quickly and the quality of the readers was quite good for those that I tested. Educationally, I would use this to play the reading of the book, story, or poem for the class and have students follow along with their own copy of the text. The amount of entries is fairly limited at this point, but there is a nice selection of different genres and many classics.
2. MasteryMaze is a site that has video podcasts of PowerPoint presentations that review the major concepts primarily in ancient civilization, modern world history, and US history. It was developed by a teacher to help her students learn the material in her classes. There are a few other topics that are listed, but there is very little content in them. Some of the PowerPoint pages have no photos, so they wouldn't be too interesting to my seventh grade students. However, as a quick review for key concepts, they are quite good because most are just a few minutes long. I would use the ancient civilizations section for my world geography class as a review at the end of a unit.
3. Global Sound is a site from the Smithsonian that has podcasts and vodcasts of music from around the world. There is a wide selection of musical genres and a wide array of countries to choose from. You can search by country, culture group, genre, instrument, and others. I had trouble with the vodcasts being jerky while streaming. I did not have trouble with any other vodcasts that I had tried during the same evening, so I'm not sure if it was my computer or the site. I downloaded a few and there were no problems. I can see using these as a way to introduce a unit or play as background music when students are working on classwork. Also, I can see playing this while I collect homework. There is a nice descriptive paragraph about each song.
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