Have you ever herard:"Can you hear me now?"...a popular commercial inquiry regarding both radio and auditory signals providing the opportunity to elaborate all that's "fit to broadcast" out to the wide world on every square centimeter of planet Earth (albeit by cell phone)...yet what types of auditory content do we really need-- and is an endless "calibration check" the most interesting expected outcome of these sorts of auditory technologies?
The use of podcasts in education, although a fairly recent addition to the educator's toolkit, however, may hold some important cards in the education hand dealt out to students today. The podcast is essentially a miniature stored audio program that can be accessed easily at any time and replayed as often as one would like. So, what can an educator do with this?
Announcements, assignments, audio communications, and other types of teacher to student interactions could be "podcast" out to students. In turn, students could do the same and provide assignments, responses, interactions, and other types of audio feedback via podcasts. Discussions from class or important short "reports" of various types that will be beneficial to other students would seem to be especially relevant uses of podcasts in this context.
In addition, some uses of podcasts could extend to science in areas such as exchanges of audio information. Examples could be insect or other animal sounds, beating hearts of various types of mammals, sound experiments with musical instruments or household items, and unusual phenomena that produce noise. Noise pollution itself could be monitored and podcast on a frequent basis from spots around various metropolitan areas.
Student stories or short "radio" type plays could be created as assignments along with student audio "commercials" that utilize student audio creativity in their design and creation. Students with vocal or instrumental music talent could create podcasts of their latest song ideas or vocalization practices for music teachers and others to provide feedback.
Interviews of various experts in fields could be podcast much as they are on radio stations. These could be conducted by students and then shared with other interested students and a wider public.
In short, a podcast is another way to share audio (and some video) information across the digitally connected world of today. So, now, if a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear it...just download its podcast and all of your philosophical problems are solved...well, maybe not that easy, but it does offer some very interesting options for shared audio files.
My only concern is that someday I will discover a podcast that someone has made of me snoring...hopefully not during my class, however. I wonder if someone has made a podcast of Dolphins "talking"? Manatees or whales "singing"? Leaves rustling? A stream burbling? Bees buzzing? Birds chirping? Ships creaking (or stairs)? The sound cars make when traveling over a bridge? A tornado? A hard rock song played backwards? Hmmmm....perhaps one of these hides secret clues to the meaning of life. A light bulb turning on...Gotta go...I have some podcasting to do--no telling what I might "catch" with my latest "cast".
Smiles.
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