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Why use podcasts? |
Podcasts allow you and your students to create content quickly and easily, time-shift content (access content at a later time when it suits) and present complex and ever-changing information in an efficient way. We’ll look at these and other benefits below.
Podcasting allows students to personalise their learning. They can listen and learn whenever and wherever they want. For example, students can listen to a podcast while they are travelling to and from college or work. They can also use it for revising content.
Podcasts can be created quickly and easily. You can develop content on issues of immediate importance and interest to students.
Podcasting allows trainers to present information on a student’s audio, rather than visual channel. Information that students acquire in sessions and through reading can be reinforced through the brain’s auditory channel. Listening to content rather than reading may be preferred by some students.
A discussion between two people can contain a lot of content that would otherwise be difficult and time consuming to read. Podcasting can be used to provide content that might be dull in a fun and interesting way.
For example, podcasting can be an ideal medium for demonstrating or practising language or communication skills.
There is a wealth of material that you can tap into on the internet. There are many podcasts available that teachers can use to supplement their own resources. These podcasts range from the more professional, for example ABC Radio programs, to ones produced in the general community by interested people. By subscribing to podcasts, you can compile a range of dynamic content that can provide the basis for activities and learning.
Creating and sharing student-made podcasts, or involving students in the production of trainer-made podcasts, can be a way to strengthen a virtual community and individual identities.
You can use podcasts as a tool to get students to create their own content and meaning. This encourages engagement in, and ownership by, students because they can apply what they have learnt, or share their knowledge and experience, and then make it available for their peers to listen to and comment on.
The following is a list of strategies that you could use podcasting for.