After photoblogs,moblogs and videoblogs, podcasting is the most recent development to reach the educational blogosphere.
D’Arcy Norman from The Learning Commons imagines a scenario where “students … subscribe to an RSS feed, and have recordings of every lecture automatically stored on their hard drive or iPod or whatnot for review” or “interviews with external resources”.
David Jennings (read DJALCHEMI)is not that enthusiastic. One can read 2000 words of text and image but it it difficult to skim or concentrate on audio for more than 20 minutes.
Yes, David is right there, but for language teachers, podcasting may be a bonus. Mass communication is changing from broadcasting to narrowcasting. This is a free service and opens one more alley for individual expression. Our students can not only self-publish audio files but also have the choice of retrieving/subscribing to the feeds they feel like listening to. An engaging and motivating way of practicing listening and speaking skills. We´ll have to try to create a proper network for our students to interact in.
I can imagine something like an asynchronous audio forum…with someone webcasting a controversial question which podcasters discuss on their blogs and entertain a conversation. How about a podquest, Bernie? Would that be possible?
Aaron P Campbell also brainstorms on a number of good uses for podcasting in EFL.
