Podcasting

I have never known how to utilize podcasts for educational purposes until I started looking more closely at it's resources for this class - the only time I ever used or listened to a podcast was for Harry Potter news from MuggleCast (geeky, I know). I then saw a few months ago that my parents were using podcasts to learn some basic Italian before they went on their 2 week trip to Tuscany. For the past few days I have looked into different ways this program could be used in the classroom and outside of the classroom for educational purposes and believe that it is fun and very useful - any type of teacher can use it!

There are podcasts for all different languages, math, science, history, English, you name it. The best thing about podcasts is that they are FREE! What's cool about these podcasts is that they are either someone talking to you or they can be videos. What I really think is cool is that if students want to say be able to speak a language better or learn more about a language, they can go home, and if they have access to a computer, they can listen to the podcast for free on that certain language and be able to practice - it's interactive and fun.

Also, the video podcasts could be helpful for a lesson plan if it relates to the material being taught for that day - the teacher could always pull it up quickly and have the students watch it and then discuss it.

Another usage is iTunesU, which I love and use even now for some of my classes in college, but I don't want to steal the thunder from the group who is evaluating this subject for class.

Podcasting in general just seems like a good way to get education from people to others via iTunes and the internet. It's free and it's an easy tool to access and use for the classroom to get that technological feel for the students and the teacher.

I'd most likely use this tool specifically for any video podcasts that could fit into a history classroom that would help my lesson plans. I'd also maybe have a day where the students would be on computers or laptops and listen to podcasts by themselves on the topic we are learning about or maybe a current events topic, being that CNN and many other news stations have free podcasts, and have the students write up a short essay on what their topic was and what podcast they used and how they found it.

I haven't seen many constraints - it seems as though it would be more beneficial in middle school to high school rather than early childhood education - it seems like there are more mature podcasts out there than for young children, but perhaps I just did not come across any at the time I was looking.

There's so much more that one can do with podcasting, but what I listed and discussed seems to be the most important to me and the most beneficial towards education. If I find anything more, perhaps I'll post some more on this topic.

-Danielle