Thing 17 Redux: Podcasting Opine

Podcasting in the classroom could be used for many purposes, and I think will become even more used than it already is once people get to know the concept better and the technology for making them more readily.

I've been to most of these sites before, pulling useful tidbits here and there to share with my classes. This time I went first to The Education Podcast Network and pulled off a couple of podcasts: a couple of episodes of "Shakespeare-Upon-iPod" from the new biography "Shakespeare by Another Name," the life & times of Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, who researchers think wrote under the name of William Shakespeare; and also "I'm Bringin' Vocab Back!" a podcast segment from "Podcasting with Mrs. S."

Second, I went to NPR.org and chose "The Poet's Weave" poetry reading podcast hosted by WFIU in Bloomington, IN, so that I could share live reading of poetry with my Modern Poetry class.

I have used many podcasts in my room as accessories to learning. They cannot be the central source of learning because of the lack of visual and textual layers, but they are certainly good adjunct pieces to further enhance the learning process. If students learn best by using all of their senses, then this sort of auditory information, especially when put into a format that is interesting and that can be put on their computers or iPods and listened to again and again at their own paces is truly an advantage over traditional learning methods.

I have only made a few podcasts myself, not for lack of desire, but more because of time constraints. I'm a perfectionist and tend to want to use GarageBand or other more complicated software. I need to get past that.