Blog Post #4

The benefits of podcasting in the classroom Video

I'm very familiar with podcasts. I've done a few of my own over the years as well as a couple with others. I have always been and always will be an advocate of using podcasts in the classroom. It's definitely an effective way of interacting with students that can be unbelievably helpful outside of the classroom. This video shows the things I've known for years and I'm glad you I watched it. Podcasts are a way of learning that students today can relate to and understand making it relevant, new, and exciting way to learn.

I totally agree that it promotes creativity and innovation because very few student's have participated in a podcast before. Amazing things can happen during a student first podcast and it's very fun to see the looks on their faces when you see your student's having fun and learning at the same time. As the video also mentioned, it's great for those student's who miss class for whatever reason. I wish podcasts were available for me up to this point for this very reason. Another plus is creating and participating in podcasts is extremely easy and anyone can do it. There are a ton of ways and different things you can do with your student's to make it useful pertaining to what they are learning. Last, parents get to hear what's going on in class for themselves and I know they will appreciate that. I know my mom would have.

100 Ways to Use Your iPod to Learn and Study Better Blog

I think I'm going to thoroughly enjoy the podcast portion of this class. As I said above, it's nothing new to me, and I've been doing this for a while now. It's something I haven't forgotten about, but I haven't used it a ton either. Having said that, there are still quite a few things/programs I didn't know about before reading this blog.

VangoNotes is one I hope to get familiar with and try out. I'm always looking for new and different ways to try out new ways to learn and I'm excited to see what it is all about. I could name 50 more that interest me such as AudioLearn. Any advantage one can use to help them prepare or give them an edge in studying for important tests is student's should eat up. I look forward to trying some of these out and I think this is something every student should take a look at. On a closing note, growing up in school I was always extremely bored with reading the chapters andlooking up answers in the book, reading the chapters, just the old fashioned way of learning, etc. It didn't suit me well. I did it, but things like podcasts make it so much easier for me to learn material. I wish it was around when I was in elementary and middle school. I'm happy for the student's of today and especially my student's, because they will be the best podcasters in the region ha ha.

The Education Podcasting Network Blog

This is a very interesting site and I've long thought about making a site like this myself. There needs to be a central hub (or at least a select few) for teacher's and student's alike to use and help them learn. The idea is genius and I'm sure someone out there has done it already. I envisioned (and this site seems like it's scratching the surface of something much bigger) categorizing thousands of podcasts for their respective field and creating an easy and seamless way of navigating through specific podcasts that reference exactly what you are looking to learn about.

One gripe I have with some certain podcasts regardless of topic, is the length of them. It depends on what you're talking about, but in general I think most of them are too long. Thus comes the idea of cutting audio and pasting together the parts you think are relevant to a particular student. Site's like this are on to something, but I often get frustrated viewing them because of what they could be. Nonetheless, you have to start somewhere. Who knows, maybe if I find the time and money, I'll create such a site that student's from all over can go to and easily choose between the millions of podcasts that pertain to the exact material they need to be studying. It would warm my heart, to know I've helped so many people. Podcasts are an exciting way to learn and I look forward to seeing what the future has in store for podcasting.