Thing #18 Podcasts

To quote the syllabus, " a podcast is the ability to listen to audiovisual content either live or downloaded for future use." The beauty is that it is available on demand and accessible on many of our new "tools." I love that fact that it is audio and that users will have to listen! This is fast becoming a lost skill and a diminishing format for learning and acquiring knowledge. I see this as a resource for high school and middle school students looking for opinions and current information to use in persuasive writing. Where else is everyone entitled to your opinion! Teaching how to recognize reliable sources becomes extremely important in an exercise such as this. I did notice that NPR gave credentials for each person. In my final reflection I plan on sharing a recent NY Times article entitled Texts Without Context which appeared in today's Arts & Leisure section. However, at this point I will mention the terms access and convenience and the idea that users are willing to take imperfect information in any form that is immediate over a more thoughtful and scrutinized product. I enjoyed listening to Ross Douthat, a friend of my son, who has become quite the conservative voice on NPR, for The Atlantic, and now the NY Times Op Ed Page.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111885116

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92561906

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4567667

I tried some of the educational podcasts but was not able to retrieve them. Podcast.com offered quite a variety. I listened to young children reading stories with expresson ( maybe a little too much!) The next step would be to upload a podcast!