Podcasting in Education

Podcasting is a great way for teachers to give additional information to their students beyond worksheets and notes.  Podcast are especially useful for foreign language classes where it is important that the students hear how works are suppose to be pronounced.  For an English class a teacher could have their students read scenes from a play as the characters in the book and publish the podcast.

This week I learned about 3 of the different tools that you can use to create podcast.  The great thing about these tools is that they are completely free to use and download. First is Audacity which is a great tool to record your podcast because you are able to record different tracks and rearrange them so that your podcast will sound the way that you want it to.  Second is iTunes which is great for uploading your podcast for everyone to check out as well as checking out other peoples podcast. Last is AudioBoo which is a resource to create simple podcast to publish. I have created links to these sites so that you can check them out.

I have created 2 examples of podcast to share with you. The first one is a the poem Early bird by Shel Silverstein that I created using Audacity.  The second podcast that I have is a review of a podcast that I found on iTunes called 3.14 Fun Facts About Pi by Jason Marshall. I used AudioBoo to create my review. In Jason Marshall's podcast he talks about some of the interesting facts about pi.

For my iTunes podcast I simply created an AudioBoo account and started to record what I had to say. It was very simple and it saved it straight to the account that I created and was ready for me to upload and embed into my blog.


For my Audacity podcast I created different tracks in Audacity. One of them I recorded myself and the others I uploaded from different files on my computer. It was very easy to edit and shift the tracks to the position that I wanted. I then saved the file as a mp3 and uploaded the saved file to AudioBoo so that I could embed it into the blog the same way I did the previous post.

listen to ‘iTunes Summary’ on Audioboo

listen to ‘Audacity Upload’ on Audioboo

Social Media

Social Media

     Social Media has become a must in the 21st century.  If you don't have a Facebook, Twitter, or Blog account, you are being left behind in the wide world of information sharing.  Social Media is great for educators because it allows them to interact with different people from anywhere that they can access a computer, smartphone, or a tablet.
     A drawbacks to using Social Media sites in education is if that is your only source of communication.  Some students may not have constant access to a internet capable device in order to communicate with you.  Also, even though technology is everywhere, it is still very new to people and you should make sure that your students are comfortable with blogging or other social media networks before you decide to dive right in to interactive education.
     Twitter is a great way for educator to network with each other as well as make contacts with people that are able to help with bringing technology into the classrooms.  In the article Social Networking Goes to School by Michelle R. Davis, Principal Sheninger talks about how twitter helped him partner with a company that donated equipment and training to the school.  Without Twitter this might have never been possible.  The article Social Media Improves Education by Digital Learning Environment points our how wikis are a great social media resource that allows multiple people to collaborate on a topic and work simultaneously while in two completely different locations or even in two different countries.  No more having to figure out schedules and what library to meet at.  Just sit at your home and share ideas and add your own information to a project while your partner does the same.