Podcasting Done Right

There are several great podcasts out there that provide their audience with engaging and fresh content which are two essential qualities of a good podcast.

The first podcast I would recommend checking out is both engaging and fresh - Grammar Girl. Grammar Girl is a podcast that aims to share knowledge/information on grammar issues - before you write it off as boring, you should know that what makes this podcast exceptional is that listeners interact with "Grammar Girl" by submitting questions/comments which are addressed in her next podcast. This way Grammar Girl is engaging her listeners and building a long term audience.

Another podcast that I personally liked due to the topic was that of iPhone app development course at Stanford University. The drawback about this podcast compared to Grammar Girl is that it is essentially a video recording of a lecture, and there really is no interaction between the podcast listener and the instructor. Also, since these are also video files - the file size is much larger and takes much longer to download.

Podcasts are a great way to publish news and commentary much like a radio broadcast. NPR utilizes podcasts very well to make their programming available beyond the radio audience. There are several great shows such as On the Media, Car Talk, Radiolab which I subscribe to on my iPhone. Like education, NPR's value is in it's content and making that content available through multiple channels (radio, computer, iPod) is important.

Image Blogs

A unique way that students and teachers can implement blogs into the classroom is through image blogs. Photos have become an integral part of student's lives and are a great way to introduce topics into the classroom.

One example of how student's were able to effectively use an image blog such as Flickr in the classroom was a with annotated photos describing the image. By adding annotations which reveal information about the image or subject - a simple image can be a teaching tool. Click here for an example http://www.flickr.com/photos/lewiselementary/69461520/.

Another way image blogs can be used is to organize content presented in an image blog by a theme. Themes can help bring relevance to the images. Teachers or students can contribute relevant images based upon a certain theme or topic relevant to their coursework. An example of what a themed image blog can be found here on this photo stream on flickr http://www.flickr.com/groups/redrule/.

One thing I personally enjoy is travel photography, to me this is something that I find relevant and I can find meaning in. Similarly, image blogs allow students and teachers to create and share content that is geared toward an instructional goal and does not have to just be haphazard. To view a great travel blog I found check out http://blog.flickr.net/en/2009/11/25/photochrom-travel/

Great Blog For Resources

Colleen McNeil maintains an excellent blog that can prove incredibly useful for efforts to promote the use of Web 2.0 technologies in the classroom. Her blog contains many valuable resources she has found through her experiences that are valuable not only towards the application technology but the broader impact technology has on students. This blog hasn't been updated in a while, however, the old content is not outdated and still valuable.

McNeil's blog can be found at http://techedandweb2tools.blogspot.com/