With winter weather turning my daily commute into a daily exercise in tedium, my iPod has proved an invaluable companion during long afternoons on the highway. While listening to music is always a nice diversion, I’m finding that podcasts are an informative and entertaining way to pass the time. For those of you not familiar with podcasting, Apple, the company synonymous with podcasts, offers a good explanation on their site:

The word ”podcast” is a concatenation of the words iPod and broadcast. The underlying technology used for podcasts, called RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is capable of containing any type of media including audio, video, graphics, and more.

Podcasting is a way of publishing podcasts to the web, allowing people to subscribe to a podcast and receive new ”episodes” automatically through an RSS feed. Podcasting consists of publishing XML files which contain references to media (called “enclosures”) to a website. Podcast aggregators (often called “podcatchers”), then read these XML files and download all the linked enclosures.

Unlike terrestrial and Internet radio, podcasts are time-shifted, meaning that listeners have control over when and where they hear their favorite programming. And, the episodes are delivered automatically to a subscriber on iTunes so the latest updates are always readily available with no effort required by the listener.

Podcasts offer iTunes users and iPod owners the same freedom and level of control they are familiar with when listening to their own personal music collections.

In more direct terms, podcasts are “on-demand” audio and video programs that can be listened to/viewed either on a computer or an iPod. Much like GoogleReader will notify you when new posts have been added to your favorite blogs, iTunes will automatically check for new content from podcasts that you subscribe to and make it available for download. You can listen/watch what you want, when you want, as many times as you want. The concept of “scheduled programming” is redefined to suit your schedule, and the programming choices are nearly endless.

In addition to news, sports, and entertainment podcasts, there are literally tens of thousands of podcasts devoted to politics and government, foreign languages, science and nature, and education. Need to catch up on the latest news from Lake Wobegon? Each week Garrison Keillor podcasts an update on NPR. Miss the President’s last radio address? It is available each week from the Whitehouse. Curious about courses, lectures, and events at Stanford University? Subscribe to Stanford on iTunes U and get a taste of all the university has to offer.

Why are Podcasts Important?

Stanford is not the only educational institution exploring the benefits of podcasting. Some of the best colleges in the world use podcasting as an instructional tool. And educational podcasts are not limited to higher education; thousands of elementary and secondary schools are podcasting every day. Professional development podcasts abound, including replays of sessions from the 2007 K12 Online Conference and EdTechTalk.

Although podcasts are typically considered as something to be consumed (subscribed to), they are powerful tools for student expression and developing a sense of audience. As educational technology and podcast expert Wes Fryer said in his article Classroom Audio Podcasting,

Education in the twenty-first century should focus on the development of authentic literacy skills for students. Learning to read, write, listen, speak, critically analyze information and communicate ideas using a variety of modalities is vital for children of all ages. Some of the most frequent complaints of writing teachers, however, revolve around a lack of student motivation to write. How can teachers increase students’ desire to express themselves effectively and appropriately?

One of the most basic and powerful ways to increase student motivation to write and communicate is to change student perceptions of audience. Some students are motivated to write to please their teacher and earn a high grade, but that is not the case for everyone. Instead of asking students to write exclusively for an audience of one (the teacher) using technology from the mid 1500s (a pencil,) teachers can now challenge students to publish for a global listening audience via a classroom podcast.

The seventh grade science students experienced this first-hand when they recently created podcasts of their public service announcements. While the scope of their audience remains to be seen, I think it’s fair to say the quality of their work improved as a result of creating “public” content.

Give it a Listen

If you’ve never listened to or watched a podcast, I would encourage you to try any of the resources I’ve highlighted here and/or visit the iTunes store and browse their selection of free podcasts. Subscribing is easy (the Help menu has detailed instructions) and you are sure to find something appealing. In a future post I’ll share some of my favorite podcasts. In the meantime, take a moment to explore and when you find something good, give it a listen and tell us about it!

Posted: 02|12|08 at 7:31 pm. Filed under: In the Classroom, Podcasting, Professional Development.
Pinging is currently disabled.