Podcasts in Education

This week I took a look at podcasting as a teaching tool. Podcasts can be useful in a variety of ways.  As a librarian, I might create podcasts to share with my students about the latest titles that I have read as well as short pieces to help students navigate the research process.  It would also be neat to have students record their own book review podcasts to upload to the library station.  As a teacher, I like the idea of exploring some good educational Podcast stations to have students listen to.  After looking at GrammarGirl's podcasts, I thought this would be a fun way to change up bell work from time to time.  I'm sure my students wouldn't mind hearing a voice other than mine going over content for the day!  

I think that in order to be successful at getting students to listen to a podcast station, it would probably have to be done in large group settings.  I don't think that most students are going to seek out and listen to these things on their own time.  I do think, however, that teachers would benefit from a good podcasts for professional development purposes, so a librarian might create some of these to share information with the faculty.  Maybe it would be neat for principal's to address the staff this way in between faculty meetings instead of the classic bulleted email.

I explored three websites for creating and hosting podcasts: SoundCloud, Audioboo, and Podomatic.  I chose to use SoundCloud to create my podcast.  I liked that the homepage of the site listed suggestions for podcasts to follow, and it was easy to create an account and jump right in to recording or uploading a recording.  The site allows you to embed your podcasts to share elsewhere.  Audioboo required you to submit details about your podcast before being set up to get started, so I didn't get very far with it because I had already discovered how simple SoundCloud was, and didn't feel it necessary to take those extra steps.  It did offer a wide variety of podcasts to listen to right away, though.  Unfortunately, my exploration of Podomatic was cut short because as I tried to create the account, I continually got an error message that said "Captcha failed".  I tried several times, but never could get the account created.

I don't know if this was just a me thing, or if the site was having some issues, but it blocked my ability to check it out any further.

I created a podcast titled "5 Apps to Amp Up Projects".  This is a podcast that I plan to really share with the students and teachers at my school.  Here it is: