Podcasting

This week's class dealt with podcasting, and that provided quite a bit of interest for me. As background, I download a ton of podcasts, which I listen to on drives, when working out, or working in the yard. I tend to aim towards the entertainment field, as I enjoy listening to a bunch of people debate how good or bad a movie is.

With that in mind, I'm more than happy to try to incorporate podcasting into the class. The key is, how do we use it? A few ideas are below:

1. Group Discussions about stories, poems, or novels. This could be an interesting way of having people summarize.
2. Forensics/Debate/Drama-This is a great way of having people practice presentational skills; I've had kids who could read for years. The issue has always been interpretation, speed, and the like. This could help with that.
3. Notes for the Class-I could put notes on a podcast, which the students could then review by listening to on their mp3 players.
4. School News-Another way to present news. The students could create a podcast and use it to display important events for the week in the school and in the class.

I think the ideas are definitely there. I think what I need to go into is what sites or tools are the best for podcasting. For example, I don't think that I'd have access to cell phones, so gcast is not a possibility. Audacity is a possibility, but I'd like to look into tools that allow for multiple voice.

Well, that sums up my views for now. If any of you regularly use podcasts, I'd love to hear your suggestions.