Tuesday, November 08, 2005

Educational Uses of Podcasts

I just finished reading a very interesting article called "There's Something in the Air: Podcasting in Education." It was mentioned in Open Stacks, and I fully intended only to read the introduction but got sucked in and had to read the whole thing. The introduction sets up a scenario of how a student uses podcasts in her daily life. It is potentially over-the-top, as I know of very few students who get that excited about what they are studying, but perhaps it's not too far off the mark.

This article gives a great overview of podcasting and some possible ways it can be used in higher education. Some of these educational uses include professors requiring students to create podcasts for group projects as teasers for their later presentations during class, professors who podcast about what they have been reading in the professional literature but do not have time to cover in class, and more. The author of this article, Gardner Campbell, has created a podcast series called "A Donne a Day" during which he reads one poem by John Donne each day. He hopes that his use of inflection and voice during the reading of the poems will help his students better understand the intricacies of Donne's poetry. What a neat idea!

Do any of you have professors who podcast or use podcasting in your classes in some way or other? I'm curious if this is becoming more widespread or if it's still limited to a select few professors or institutions.

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