Podcast

According to the Webster's New Millennium™ Dictionary of English, "Podcast is a Web-based audio broadcast via an RSS feed, accessed by subscription over the Internet." So its basically just a conversation which is broadcasted.

The first podcast, SMARTBoard Lesson, was in my opinion not as organized and focused on the topic as the other podcast I heard were. I listened to three or four of the topics listed and thought that the host Ben Hazzard and Joan Badger were spending way to much time talking about the weather, and ways of making changes to the podcast. I did however find some of the information helpful. After all it was meant as a aid for professional development of busy teachers.

The second podcast, Kidcast, was what I thought to be the best as far as interesting and easy to listen too. The topic "Questions Make the World go Round" was the one that I primarily focused on. In this discussion, Dan Schmitt, spoke of how questions are the central focus of a good academic podcast. We need to focus on how to ask good questions and how to go about finding the correct answer. So we should practice having a conversation of only questions. This would be like brainstorming in a way but only using questions. They also discussed how Penn State has 60 second lectures. I found this really interesting. So I kept listening. What Dan said was that a scholar is chosen to discuss a topic and only given 60 seconds to get his/her point across. So basically that person has to narrow his topic to answer one specific question. Dan also suggest that we do the same and practice giving 60 second lectures.

The third podcast, Connect Learning, I found this discussion very useful. The fourth podcast, Ed TechTalk, was also very helpful. It discussed something called Youth Voices. An account is made for each student and mostly is used to introduce students to technology. They also talked of digital photography. The question was raised "Could a picture taken express a person's life?". Is a picture really worth a thousand words? They also talked with a teacher who used Blogs and Youth Voices in her classroom. The teacher had a class blog and the students also had a blog in which they were responsible for commenting on classmates , and posting pictures of their work.

The fifth podcast, MacBreak Weekly, was also one that I believed jump too much from topic to topic. The host were Leo Laporte, Larlin Mann, Scoot Bourne, and Alex Lindsey. Their primarily focus was on cameras. They discussed what they believe to be the best and what to look for when purchasing a camera.

The sixth podcast, This Week in Photography, Alxe Lindsey and Scoot Bourne discussed digital imaging and sharing of pictures. In sharing of pictures I am primarily referring to printers. The host mentioned that a picture isn't a picture into it's in print. They discussed ink jet printers which could be as cheap as fifty dollars. They also discussed dye's versus pigment. Both are great however pigments would be better recommended. This involves my podcast reviews.