Journal #6: Podcasting

Podcasting is a way to post and distribute electronic media files online. Podcasts are of interest because they provide an easy way to get engaging multimedia content out to a dispersed group of people, who can listen to it whenever and wherever they like on a variety of readily-available platforms. Podcasting is becoming increasingly important in the field of education because it is a new way for teachers and students to relay information back and forth. Teachers especially can benefit as podcasting is a great way to keep the learning interesting and also make it accessible to parents.

The Classroom 2.0 discussions on podcasting were all very interesting and informative in regards to how one might implement podcasting in the classroom. One of the discussion boards titled, “Your Web Review Series #3: Podcasting Software and Services” was particularly informative as it addressed the best hardware to use, what to record/edit audio with, what service to use and so on. In this particular discussion all types of programs were listed including: Audacity, GarageBand, Sony Acid 3.0 and Camtasia to record and edit audio. Itunes, Virb, and Feedburner were also recommended to manage or host the podcast feeds. The nice thing about this discussion and the others I read was the fact that while they explained how to podcast and what a teacher would need, they also gave links and ideas for interesting projects one could use in their classroom. Another discussion titled “Teacher’s use of podcasts as a teaching tool!” was great in that one poster laid out a step by step guide on the basics of using Audacity to podcast. Another teacher spoke of how to use Camtasia studio and shared a link to a series on creating podcasts. In closing the discussions under the tools section in Classroom 2.0 are great for teachers in that they provide an excellent resource for using different technologies in the classroom