Sunday, May 1, 2011

Podcast and Education

Podcasting is basically the creation and distribution of amateur radio, plain and simple. It is the combination of personal, on, demand and cast. It has three main advantages: unlimited, subscription and gadgetry. First of all, anyone can do a podcasting with a microphone, a video camera, a computer, the internet and something to say. Secondly, through subscription, new shows could be saved automatically. The only thing you need is a receiver which could capture the shows; then, you can watch the shows whenever you want and at wherever you like. Thirdly, you can download the podcasting from the computer to your mp3 or any other portable devices to take it with you.
Podcasting can be used in education. First of all, Teachers can use it as a message board to announce upcoming events, interviews, reviews, and whatever else might be of interest.
Also, teachers could record and publish daily practice lessons that students could listen to at home. Minor Medical Injuries gives us an example about how teachers integrated podcasting and English learning.
Third, Teachers could have their students do oral presentations, interviews through podcast.
Enlighten by the ESL podcast Minor Medical Injuries, I would incorperate podcasting to the answer about my students questions. That means, I would collect my students questions every week (grammatical, semantic or pragmatic questions), and I would answer these questions with podcast because the class time is limited. And perhaps I have two sections with different students but the same teaching stuff, then I don't have to repeat my answer twice and all students can share more questions and answers.