Podcasting Puts a Foot in the Door

Question from a Superintendent: What new technology can you show us that we can begin using right away but which won’t cost us a lot of money?

Answer: Podcasting! It’s way sexy right now, meets the needs of a variety of learning styles, and can be started with free software and a $20 microphone.

There are a number of great resources for learning the whys of podcasting as well as the hows of using Audacity and the wherefores of content. As I explained, not only to the Superintendents but also to the high school computer applications class I have been working with the past two weeks, the actual how of podcasting is a five to ten minute conversation. Developing content takes a bit more time…

Some of the quick ideas we came up with included using podcasting and playback via a portable player to provide testing accommodations for students with special needs who need tests or passages read aloud. Students for whom English is not a primary language can use podcasting as a way to hear and create English language conversational situations. By recording and listening to themselves, students who have speech problems or are shy may gain confidence in their ability to edit their recordings to remove undesirable pauses or interjections. This doesn’t even begin to touch on the many other uses - weekly news reports to forge connections between school and community, building a book talk collection, or just sharing some thoughts.

Even more important than podcasting itself, however, is that the technology can be a foot in the door for Web 2.0. For some reason podcasting just doesn’t (or hasn’t so far) have the same negative impressions associated with it that blogging sometimes does. Podcasting might be a nice gateway technology, however, that lets a district become comfortable enough to try a blog for distribution or a wiki for scripting.

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