Podcasting—Audio Blogging for the Ages.

I don’t know about you, but I enjoy listening to podcasts. Whether a podcast is about the day’s events or your favorite hobby, many people make listening to podcasts a routine like drinking a cup of coffee or eating a bagel on the way to work. Podcasting for educators, however, involves a whole different set of issues. For one, podcasts are definitely great ways to post weekly reminders to students about completing assignments and allowing students to find out about missing assignments, when they are absent from class. Podcasts are a super tool that can allow educators to explain how to write essays and review concepts in foreign languages. As a Social Studies educator, I see podcasts as making education come alive for students. Podcasting allows people to express their opinions on many topics. Podcasts are a forum for the masses. The trick is to find podcasts that target the needs of your audience, in this case students, or to create podcasts with computer software (like Audacity) that address the needs of your students. Here is a small sampling of podcasts that you, as the educator, may want to explore when addressing topics in Social Studies.
1. The 60-second Civics podcast is a free podcast that can found on iTunes. This podcast explains concepts about politics and American society to high school age students. The people who create the podcasts are the same people who have written the We the People: the citizen and Constitution curriculum. Therefore, the material is geared for the high school student, but perhaps could be used at the middle school with some explanation of concepts by the educator.
2. Another free podcast on iTunes is the One Person can make a difference series. This series discusses people in history like Amelia Earhart and Coco Chanel and can give students a snippet of the history behind a person and can lead to further discussions in your classroom.
3. For those who would like to explore New Jersey History at an introductory level, this podcast also found in iTunes is also a great opportunity to show students what they can do to teach their peers with technology.
4. One other site that I would like to mention is The Education Podcast Network, which is found at http://epnweb.org. This website is filled with tons of podcasts for educators for Social Studies, English, Science, Mathematics and even Music and Theatre Arts Education. The website does stress that they do not certify the content for the podcasts. You as the educator must preview the material before your students listen to it. I personally found the History Podcast and the podcast called First Amendment Minute to be very good. The First Amendment Minute would be a good “prime the pump” tool to engage in First Amendment discussion with students in Government classes. The History Podcast deals with a variety of topics, which would fit many different history classes in Middle and High School.
I need to reemphasize the point for educators that you must preview podcasts, as scrupulously as you do any other material you use in your classrooms. As I said before, this is not an all-inclusive list. I personally believe that podcasting may become the “new” standard for how we educate students effectively, when using technology. It would be very easy for students to create podcasts for their student portfolios as examples of effective oral communication in Speech classes, for example. Who knows, with audio and video podcasts, podcasting may become the accepted standard for students showing they have addressed standards in the classrooms of tomorrow. Just something to consider.