Podcasting

According to Wikipedia, “ Podcast”, is short for “Personal On Demand broadCAST”. Podcasting started gaining popularity in 2004. It was chosen as New Oxford’s American Dictionary’s 2005 word of the year. According to New Oxford American Dictionary the definition of podcast is, “a digital recording of a radio broadcast or similar program, made available on the Internet for downloading to a personal audio player.”

Up until a few months ago, I had never seen a podcast, much less created one. I remember hearing the term, but not really giving it much thought. After creating a podcast and researching the many ways podcasting can be used in education, I am excited about integrating this technology into my classroom and into my future media center.

Podcasts are on the go technology. The information can travel with the students. With podcast, students can take the information with them and listen when and where they want. They can listen as many times as they want. I wish this technology were around when I was in school. Students can access this technology through their computers and they can download to their MP3 players.

Through my research of how podcast can be used in the library and in education in general, I found some wonderful ideas that I would like to share.

Teacher and Media Specialist use:

Podcast can be used to deliver information. When a teacher lectures in a class, as they lecture, they can create a podcast so that students can later retrieve the information at their convenience.
Podcast can be created for professional development.
Media specialist can use podcasts to promote books and features of the media center.
“Librarians can create a walking library-orientation podcast for students to carry around on an MP3 player, following instructions as they learn about different areas and resources within the library”(retrieved from . http://www.infotoday.com/cilmag/apr06/Eash.shtml )
Media Specialist can use podcast to share updates about what is happening around the school, basically an Audio News letter.


Student Use:

Podcast can be used to share what students have learned. When podcasting students have to plan, write, edit, revise, and think about what they are producing. When students realize that the rest of the world has access to what they are producing, they will take pride in their product and revise over and over until it is right.

Students are already using this technology in their every day life, so it just makes sense to let them use the technology to deliver their work.

I saw some wonderful examples of podcasting on www.grandviewlibrary.org
The media specialist used one example of podcasting with first grade students on what they learned about whales. Another example was some students reading stories they had written themselves. This media specialist used podcasting for many different applications. My favorite example of this media specialists using podcast was when she got the students to do Five Star book Reviews. This website is worth checking out for some great ideas on podcasting!

Podcasting is fun and easy for students to do. So start Podcasting.


You need a few basic bits of technology to get you started:

1. “A computer with internet access and a microphone
2. An audio, editing program such as Audacity to record your podcast
3. Upload your podcast to a web server in MP3 Format. Make sure you record the URL o where the MP3 file is stored.
4. Create a Weblog and paste the URL of your MP3 as an entry in your blog.
5. Convert your blog URL into an RSS 2.0 feed with enclosures”.

“Podcasting in the Classroom. Learning and Leading with Technology, retrieved from http://eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2spl/content_storage_01/0000019b/80/1e/1d/f3.pdf