Week 4---Podcast

"One of the Web's most powerful features is its ability to connect people and provide them with a virtual space for the sharing of ideas and content." (Hendron 67) Podcasting is one way to connect people. I have heard of podcasts. Have I ever used or made a podcast? No. After reading Chapter 3 of the Hendron text I learned a great deal about podcasts. A podcast is simply a series of digital media files (audio or video) that is released and downloaded through the Web. Podcasts can refer to an ongoing series or episodes of a particular program. Someone who creates a podcast is known as a podcaster. Podcasting started out in universities. Professors created podcasts to share lectures. This is a great idea that even teachers can use. Say a student is out of school due to an illness or surgery, they can simply download the lectures and stay in-sync with the class. It can even be used by students who leave school early for sporting events.
I always assumed that you could only use podcasts if you had an ipod. Well, you know what they say about people who assume! Once you subscribe to a podcast, it can be downloaded to your computer or your MP3 player. Subscriptions do not cost money, at least not as of right now. You can preview podcasts online and download individual episodes if you like from an online directory such as: Yahoo! Podcasts or iTunes Podcasts. Once you officially subscribe to a podcast the real magic occurs. An aggregator manages the podcasts that you subscribe to and organizes the media files on your device (MP3 player, iPhone). Everytime the podcaster creates and publishes a new podcast you receive it. The aggregator connects and continually checks with an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) file. When there is something new---BAM---you get it!
Creating podcasts has many educational benefits. Students are able to create a product to share with a potentially world-wide audience. Their podcast can be listed in iTunes, right along with podcasts from The Discovery Channel and Disney. Knowing that there is a real-world audience gives students purpose and motivation to create a spectacular product. The process of putting together an audio recording is extremely valuable and is certainly a cross-curricular experience.

I found the following ideas at a wonderful site: www.macinstruct.com/node/43

In a classroom where students have access to computers (a computer lab or in a 1-1 environment), students complete work in class and participate in instructor lead activities followed by independent work with a Podcast as resource material. Students can go through the Podcast at their own pace -working through the assignment at their own pace, backing up and reviewing material from the Podcast as needed without slowing down the class as a whole.
Podcasts that support the curriculum are identified and linked to by the instructor. As students require extra assistance on specific topics or concepts, they are directed to the Podcast resources by the instructor for additional help outside of class or during independent work in class. This is in conjunction with one-on-one assistance by the instructor with the student, but also allows the student to work on difficult concepts with extra help from other resources when the instructor is unavailable.
Students participating in English as a Second Language courses are provided with iPods containing spoken material of existing written content to allow them to listen to the material while reading. This can be done in the classroom, on the way to and from school, and at home. Improvements in reading, comprehension and verbal skills are gained through a tool that is cool to have. It’s not a dream, it’s a reality.
Students in one school create content for their own class, but also provide that content to the world so that any other school can participate in their learning process, as an observer or a learner. Comprehension of a topic grows exponentially when you are required to teach it to others. The process of creating a lesson becomes the lesson. The learners are the educators, and the educators learn from their students. This is why TIME Magazine made YOU the person of the year. You are the creator, the publisher, the subscriber, and the consumer. You control the demand and the supply. This is also a reality at Radio Willow Web, one of the leaders in educational Podcasting by students.

Hendron, J. G. (2008). RSS for educators: Blogs, newsfeeds, podcasts, and wikis in the classroom. Washington, DC: International Society for Technology in Education.