Podcasts

Podcasts Enhance Writing

Podcasts are a good way to help students build composing and writing skills. Isabel Joely Black writes that podcasting has helped her improve her writing:

"If you read your work aloud, it is much, much easier to see where you repeat yourself, where your tones and rhythms work and don’t, and whether your dialogue sounds true.

"It also becomes more obvious what’s actually interesting and worth fitting into your work and what really doesn’t belong there. Over the last few months, I’ve drastically cut down the length of my books, and my chapters. Amnar books are now tighter, more sharply written than ever before.

"You learn to develop the art of the cliffhanger.

Podcasts Focus Students on Writing Considerations

In scripting podcasts, students must

  • consider their audience and purpose;
  • write concisely and clearly as wordy and confusing sentences are less tolerated in a podcast than in writing;
  • do research for their podcasts; 


For guidance on scripting podcasts, see New Mexico State University's Creating a Podcast Script and Podcaster's Portal's Scripting your Audio Podcast.

Podcasts Promote Learning

Podcasts can engage students in their own knowledge-creating, through activities such as:

  • Amplifying on aspects of course concepts
  • Interviews with others on course issues
  • Recitals for music
  • Oral histories
  • Public service announcements
  • Narrations of the experimental process in a science lab
  • Dramatic enactments of literary pieces

Teachers can also make podcasts to

  • help students
    • better understand the material and
    • review it on their own, and
  • supplement class activity, 
    • providing reflections on the class and its discussions,
    • giving other perspectives on class topics,
    • suggesting materials for further reading and discussion, and 
    • archiving materials for review.
  • provide parents with information on their children's classes

On how listening to podcasts can enhance learning, read 'iTunes university' better than the real thing (New Scientist). If you'd like to see the research in a journal, read iTunes University and the classroom: Can podcasts replace the professor? (Computers & Education).

Podcasting Examples

Podcasting Tools and Tutorials

Podcasting Resources and Guides



Podcast Learning Resources

©2009 Charles Nelson