Instructional Uses for Podcasting II

Greg Hall and Mark Lohr visited Monroe #1 BOCES presented on Podcasting in education. Greg began by talking about the iPod and how we learn by listening. New Oxford American Dictionary chose Podcasting as the Word of the Year for 2005.

Greg is podcasting this session using ProfCast ($35 or bundled with iLife '06) and I will attempt to link the feed here for you on this blog.

Podcasting
Podcasting is Distribution Simplified. Podcasting is based on RSS (Real Simple Syndication) which is a format for sydicating news and other content, next generation pull technology to customize audio content and is easy to create.

• Platform Agnostic > Mac & Windows platform
• Listen Whenever, Wherever
• Allows for Time and Place "shifting of the Learning Experience

Why iPod+iTunes in Education? Learning to go.

Part I Podcast (Coming soon...Greg is working on it)

Podcasting on a Windows PC
iTunes is dual platform and has Podcasts available in the Music Store section. Furthermore there is an section specifically for educational podcasts. You can download the latest iTunes and start subscribing to podcast feeds easily on a PC.

Audacity is a free, open source program to record and edit audio for podcasts.

Dave M. asked about what book publishers thought about the whole podcasting piece. Greg replied that it "is driving them crazy." The conversation then turned to the differences between streaming media and podcasting media. The difference being the that once you break the network connection between your computer/device you lose the media stream.

Video iPods aren't able to use the iTalk recorder now. iTalk only works on the 3rd & 4th generation iPods. Greg reassured us that "people in storerooms" working feverishly on making a similar attachment for the 5th generation iPod (video iPod).

Back on the Mac side, GarageBand '06 has made it easier and even more versatile to create podcasts from presentations, audio and video. Cool! You can even add links within the podcast! Check it out here.

Through GarageBand you can "Send Song to iTunes" or to the web. The whole iLife '06 package has made it much easier to create, edit and publish podcasts using all types of media, photos, audio & video. If you don't have server space (i.e. - .mac account) you can save your podcast to a folder. This would be particularly useful if teachers have students access information on an intranet.

Podcasts in the Classroom
This is where the rubber meets the road in education. The following are some interesting podcasts created by students in classrooms. The links will take you to the websites.

• Mills Murfee Podcasts
• Room 208
• Radio Willow Web

What's ahead?
Check out Stanford iTunes to see what the future may hold for our schools. Apple is working with higher education to provide content through iTunes for students. There are two sides to the Stanford iTunes site, a public and a private. The private side is where a professors can provide course content for students to access. Anytime, anywhere learning indeed.