Podcasts

Listening to Podcasts has increasingly become more popular amongst our students. Teachers can take advantage of this resource to reach students with diverse learning styles and provide opportunities for freedom of expression and creative outlets.

In this post, I tried different Podcast apps to experience first-hand what would be more practical for student use.

Library Uses:

Booktalks

Library Experiences

Delivery of information on specific subjects

Sharing library news & trends

Student Use:

Listening to podcasts for extra information & enrichment

Creating podcasts for:

classroom news, historical events, stories and reader’s theater

Students internalize information in order to convey it to others. They need to be familiar with subject matter in order to sound natural while recording. Their podcasts may include special guests where they can discuss current events, issues and/or curriculum topics.

These tools are excellent classroom aides that will transcend basic learning strategies.

There are several apps that allow students to create their account and create their own podcast with ease.

PodBean:

PodBean is probably the best podcast app to start. When they create an account using their email, students can easily upload their recordings. They will need to become familiar with recording apps and create/mix their whole podcast recording. We used Wavepad Audio Editor to add sound effects and fade-outs using audio clips from Creative Commons. This also creates a teaching opportunity to teach about copyright. PodBean is easy to use and allows students to focus on only content if necessary. It also allows them to use other webapps to elaborate creatively. The overall aesthetics of the site is very student friendly because it doesn’t push other podcasts to follow but rather promotes creating your own.

SoundCLoud:

SoundCloud allows students to record up to 180 minutes in the free version. They can easily upload a file and share on various social media platforms. Once I had created the sound file I wanted to share, it was easy to upload it and share it instantly. This app’s main page however, immediately advertises podcasts to follow as opposed to promoting creating your own.

Buzzsprout:

Also extremely user-friendly. Buzzsprout allows students to upload their recording or copy it from iTunes. Users can choose to publish immediately, leave it for later or unplublished. This app allows 2 hours of podcasts for free. Once others start to listen to your podcasts, the site provides charts and graphs to know where people are accessing them the most and on what platforms. This feed can easily be submitted to iTunes by creating an account.

Our team created the following podcast about the Deep Web using Podbean:
The Deep Web