What is Podcasting??

What a great illustrator for understanding podcasting! I have typically gone to CBC to receive podcasts on programs I've missed .  It's hard to find the time to listen but I make exceptions when there's something I absolutely have to hear.  I'm a big fan of Jan Wong and her interview wtih Michael Enright on the Sunday Edition earlier this year was a must listen to - for me and my husband.  I also tracked down an episode from Jonathon Goldstein's Wiretap and I played the podcast for my students.  It was very powerful to share the story with my students this way - it served as a writing prompt: 

Game of Chance

I asked one of my students to review J.K. Rowling's latest novel "The Casual Vacancy".  Here's the podcast - perhaps more like a screencast (it is all in black as I didn't want to record my student's face - I did want to record the book jacket of the book but it was checked out):

I tried using Podbean and Blogtalkradio.  I believe I signed up for both but I had difficulty signing in and uploading. So I emailed the "video" and uploaded it to this blog.  It works. 

I came across this site - Podcasting and Audacity:

http://olytecheducation.wikispaces.com/Podcasting+%26+Audacity

It offers several ideas on how to best use the podcasting tool - for example: tour of the school/library, book talk, communicate to parents, provide feedback on assignments, etc.

This is taken directinly from the above site:  Oly Tech Education (wiki)

How to Podcast:

1. Plan
2. Produce
3. Publish

Podcasting is powerful because it can do what can't be done with broadcasting. Podcasting is great for reaching small, focused and underserved topics of interest (niches).

What is a podcast?

A podcast is an audio recording that is posted to the web. If you like what you hear here, you can save it to your desktop and listen to it there. Once it is saved to your computer, you can use iTunes or other software to upload it to your iPod or mp3 player, or you can just listen from your computer.

According to Will Richardson in "Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and other Powerful Webtools for the Classroom", people from every walk of life is podcasting: politicians, church officials, business men and women, and teachers and students (113).   Later Richardson goes on to describe how language teachers publish daily lessons for students to listen anywhere (117).  The ideas list goes on for how educators could use podcasting. I especially like this quotation:  "[Be] able to share what you create with others" (117).  This reminds me of what my husband learned at the Ian Jukes key note address at the CUEBC PRO D a couple of weeks ago.  Jukes speaks about inquiry based learning (21st Century Learner - http://www.fluency21.com/) and the importance of students presenting what they learn.  Ian Jukes espouses the need to "Deliver the Goods" - students should "publish" what they discover and podcasting is one way of doing that.

The next thing I would like to explore is screencasting.  I think it would be useful for the library as we can offer tutorials in and around the library.