I promise, I will have a Podcast up on this post at some point. Just not right now. Just because I don’t have one on here doesn’t mean we can’t talk about them though, right? Right!
I have had to make a Podcast only once, for a technology class. It was about simile and metaphor, and I wasn’t particularly pleased with the final product. I got a 15/15, though, so my professor must have been. In the education field, I see several possible applications for the use of Podcasting within my classroom. The most prominent one in my mind is the ability of me as a teacher to do review Podcasts for my students. I would still have to do paper reviews in class, however, for those students who do not have access to an iPod and couldn’t listen to the Podcast if they wanted to.
Another really cool thing that I think I can use Podcasts for is an option for students as an end-of-unit assessment. After we have finished up reading a piece of lit, how much fun would it be if instead of writing a humongous paper, you did a Podcast instead? I would like it a lot. One thing that would make this viable would be if what I really wanted to assess the student’s ability to discuss a text, their organization of ideas, really their critical thinking skills instead of their actual writing ability. If I had been doing small writing assignments as we went along, the Podcast would be a fun final assignment option for students.
Now, you’re probably all wondering: okay, so he’s talked about all these uses for Podcasts, but does he actually use them for himself? Well, I would lying if I said I really got into it before this past week’s lesson. It’s really about being disciplined enough to listen to the episodes after you download them so that they don’t just pile up and you don’t end up listening to any of them. Browsing iTunes, though, there are a myriad number of topics that people are Podcasting about (a.k.a “you can find one on something that interests you”). Looking through the education section of Podcasts, you can learn a foreign language through Podcasts alone (or at least enough to function as a tourist if you go abroad). There are even education Podcasts for educators. I subscribed to a Podcast that gave small tips on grammar usage. There was also an ESL one, which I thought was interesting. Additionally, here are the other Podcasts that I found while I was browsing that I subscribed to:
-IGN Games Podcasts
-Three Red Lights (Xbox 360 Podcast)
-Podcast beyond (PS3 Podcast)
-Nintendo Voice Chat (Wii Podcast)
-Critical Hit (Dungeons and Dragons Podcast)
-Dragon’s Landing (Ideas for tabletop RPGs Podcast)
-Meeple’s and Miniatures (Tabletop miniature games Podcasts)
-Grammar Girl (Grammar tips Podcast)
