Using Podcasts in the Classroom

I have my podcast on my computer at home, it's not entirely completed but it should be done by tonight, as long as technical items don't keep on messing with me like they have been.


Anyway when it comes to Podcasts in the classroom, I can't say that I'm quite as excited about them as I am about other means of presentation. I enjoy Podcasts if I'm in my room working on something with my hands (such as a craft) and I can turn one on from NPR or something to listen to something I find interesting, but other than that I find it difficult to become overly enthusiastic for them in more deliberate means.

After thinking about Podcasts for a short while however, I do believe there are more indirect means in which a Podcast can be effective in the classroom. A Podcast can be used as a means of a student essentially giving you a presentation, but without taking up time in the classroom. This means a student can take their time, create a fun Podcast (with different sounds, visuals, and methods of verbalization), and then simply hand it to the teacher as if it were a paper they are turning in.
A Podcast could also be used in this same manner, except in the other direction. A teacher could create a Podcast for his/her students and have them watch/listen to it at home as a replacement to something such as textbook reading, and then the next morning they could have a quiz/discussion about the material.

A Podcast is not the most exciting of presentations, and it could be a very big waste of time in class if each student makes a Podcast and they are presented in class, and if the students are grouped together there doesn't seem to enough work for everyone in larger groups to actually even have the chance to participate enough. Yet as something that can replace textbooks/papers, or create an ever-mobile and whenever-playable Powerpoint Presentation can make it effective for out-of-the-classroom time between the student and teacher.