Thing 20

Education Podcast Network and Podcast Alley are very good tools to be using to look up podcasts. In iTunes, I have really enjoyed Lit2Go put together by the University of South Florida in iTunesU. There are so many podcasts of fables, short stories, full classic novels, plays, etc, all by grade level. It is such a great resource for teachers to use. I do think that so many teachers are under the impression that they cannot get podcasts without an iPod. That will need to be made clear to them so that they can get going on this. Kids love a change and one way to do that is to introduce them to podcasting, etc. I am hoping to have more and more students creating podcasts not just listening to them.

I subscribe to several things from iTunes, but Car Talk and Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me from NPR are my favorites. I just signed up for The Onion, a little change of pace. We'll see how that goes. I couldn't listen to too much today with little ears present. Plus, I downloaded all tracks for Kindergarten and Grade 1 from Lit2Go for my daughter. She is in a generation that will be using these tools more and more. The more I know, the more I can teach her as well as my students.

I prefer to use iTunes because I have practice using it. The other tools require me to create yet another log in to subscribe to them. I'm not very interested in creating yet another log in. However, I do see how useful these tools are and I may subscribe to some at school or have teachers subscribe. One that I really found interesting was at EPN under Social Studies. Each podcast gives clues for the students to find where in the world the author is. Very good geography/history lesson.

The down side could be in the downloading. Our restrictions at school for downloading can be pretty tight and I'm not sure if teachers will be able to download. Teachers will just have to plan ahead and download at home and save to their files.

CR