Monday, November 30, 2009

Podcasting and Vodcasting


Podcasting is a convenient way of automatically downloading audio or video files to your computer. You can then play this audio or video on your computer or transfer the files to a portable MP3 or video player.(ABCnet)'Podcast' generally refers to audio. 'Video Podcast' (or 'Vodcast') refers to the distribution of video files in the same manner. To be honest I didn’t understand how it works at first. So being a learner explorer that I am download podcast and experience it on hand. I t seems that the opportunities for teaching and learning are endless. It opens up ways of learning that teachers twenty years or even ten years ago may have not even imagined.
As I type my posting I am learning about galaxies and stars. Subscribing to a reputable or educational podcast is available for free. Once it’s loaded, you can listen to it straight away. I have now a subscriber of “starstuff2009” how cool is that? Note: This takes a while to load because of its size.It can be use as background.The next episode of this subscription will now automatically. That if I want to learn more about galaxies! Surely there are podcast about on anything.


Personally I would like to load as much information about tropical plants. Ow, sorry I really need to think about my future classroom! Most of us know about digital natives so they will have iPod or MP3 or similar in their pockets or bags.

In the future I want to hear myself say “today we are going to explore….. Using your iPod instead - of “boys and girls if you have any gadgets put it back in your bag!” The main thing is that our students are engage and learning. As educators we need to engage student not enrage them (Presky, 2005). Student can upload and share ideas that are relating to the any unit.

(I think some of those students in the bus today were listening to Podcast about their assignment!----I just heard NASA will send someone " to space" to patch the hole in one unit! While typing my post I have learnt so much about Galaxies, Asteroids, and NASA’s next project!)

I am sure you can think of more ideas beside Galaxies. I have to check and research if I can download about tropical plants after coffee.


Cheers
Mary-Ann
Image retrived from:

2 comments:

  1. Hi Mary-Ann,
    Aren't they great! Now with vodcasts you get the visual aspect as well. Wouldn't it be wonderful if students could borrow ipods or MP3's from the library if they did not have their own so everyone in the class had access to one for educational purposes.
    Cheers,
    Sharon

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  2. Believe it or not, it was my 1st experience to use Podcast! Since I have started the course, my daughter is my test mouse. She now use "Google Earth","Blog" and "Podcast to learn Japanese"! I am planning to sign up for Gizmos! during school holiday as well.

    Anyway after all, I must say it is great knowledge we are learning from this course, however I think we should not forget that human touch, emotion, and feeling and not rely on them too much. We can not replace any of those with e-tools and if we can use e-tools to learn and get more knowledge, then bring the educators and learner deeper level of learning journey together, I think it is success to use e-learning tools.

    Regards
    Makiko

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