You are here:
Dr. Christie's Internet Safety Guide: Podcasting |
|
What is Podcasting?Podcasting offers a tool for today's students to creatively share ideas. It's also a way for students and educators to explore and discover educational content. Podcasts are audio or video files that are automatically delivered over a network, then played back on any Mac, PC, or iPod. When students create a podcast for class, they not only learn the content in a creative way, they learn 21st-century communications skills at the same time.
The term "podcast" (from iPod and broadcast) like the term"radio" can mean both the content and the method of delivery. View CommonCraft Video: Podcasting in Plain English to learn more about podcasting. |
|
Pitfalls and Perils
The only major danger of viewing or listening to podcasts created by others is the possibility of inappropriate content. A second possible danger is that students will spend too much time engaging with others' podcast and neglect their school work or home responsibilities.
Creating podcast have the following potential pitfalls:
But educational potentials far outweigh the pitfalls and perils as demonstrated in the following sestion. PotentialsPodcasting allows educators to take their students beyond traditional assignments by allowing them to include voice recordings, photos, movies, and sound effects to share their knowledge. Podcasting is also a great way for educators to deliver content to their students. They can distribute homework assignments, record book narration for beginning readers, or create foreign language lessons that students can review at their own pace. For educators and administrators, podcasting is also an effective tool for professional development, as well as for communicating with parents about classroom activities and school announcements.
Podcasting has become a popular technology in education, in part because it provides a way of pushing educational content to learners. However, student-produced podcasts offer greater poterntial because they provide numerous opportunities for students to become active, engaged learners who are thinking deeply and critically about the world around them. In addition, podcasting provides students with a sense of audience - and they are highly motivated to podcast because the skills required seem relevant to today's world.
The following links provide numerous examples of podcasts created by K-12 students, suggestions on how teachers can use podcasting effectively to engage learners, tutorials on how to create podcasts, and other podcasting resources for educators:
|
|
|
|
|
