Podcasting

Podcasting is a great way for anyone to make a recording for any reason. Podcasts can be a variety of things: music, an explanation of how to do something, or a report given by someone. Anyone can make and use a podcast because they are easy to do and listen to! As a teacher I would use podcasts to help students listen to certain speeches (such as a Lincoln impersonator giving the Gettysburg Address), let my students hear different languages used during different periods in time, or make a podcast to explain a project that I might want them to do by following certain explanations (this would be easy for students to access at home on the internet, that way they can't lose it as with a piece of paper). There are some pros and cons of podcasting that are important for teachers to understand when using them. Pros are evident in having things more accessible to students outside of the classroom. A teacher could use any kind of podcast online, or use their own podcast on their teacher website. This helps students to be able go online and listen to the podcast at their leisure, instead of having to do it in the class itself. This helps especially so that students could do projects at home and give time for instruction in the classroom, instead of having them work on projects during instructional time. Cons of podcasts would be that the students would need the initiative to listen to the podcasts and do the work required from the podcasts. Another con of using a podcast would be that not all students have access to the internet, or even to a computer sometimes, so it would also be important to offer students time to go to the media center and use the facilities there, since they do not have any at home.