Podcasting in the Library


I jumped on the podcasting wagon when I heard the first episode of Serial season one! I was in my first year of teaching and many of my colleagues had been talking about it. I already have a love for audiobooks- they allow me to multitask on so many levels- listening and driving, listening and working on lessons, listening and painting your new house! All of the possibilities!!

The same goes for podcasts- you can find podcasts on nearly every topic. You can find educational topics, topics on reality tv shows, ya books, any topic of your choosing.

Today we are looking at three podcasting applications and assess them for which is best to use in the classroom or library. Also, how can we use podcasts to our educational advantage?

In my podcast, I will be doing a book talk on The Book Scavenger by Jennifer Chambliss Bertman one of the BECK Reads books for next year- it was a nominee for the SC Junior Book Award. I am going to try to create this podcast on each site to see how it differs.

SoundCloud:
SoundCloud from the homepage is very simple to use. It is free to create a account. You can create an account via facebook, google, or just using your email. Once you get logged into your new account you come to your stream- where you can follow your favorite artists and see posts you track. In thr top right hand corner there is an upload button where you can upload prerecorded audio.   It was easy to use- once you have a recording to upload then I chose a picture to upload to show what the talk is about. 

AudioBoom:
AudioBoom from the homepage is also very simple. It does not have the same sync capacity like Soundcloud does, but signing up was very easy. It only asks for an email and password then accept the terms and conditions. The website sends a verification link to your email. Then it asked you to create a name for your podcast and then asked for a card for the 9.99 subscription. This stopped my progress on creating a podcast.

PodOmatic:
This log in/create an account situation was very similar to Audioboom. It did allow you to sign in via facebook, but I opted for the traditional email route. After answering the obligatory questions like name and username and password. I made it to the homepage. It displayed your feed - where you are able to follow trending podcasts. The create button in the top right hand corner leads you to uploading your podcast. It was easy to use with a step by step process to upload the audio and image to go with it.



I feel that both podcast applications are equally usable.

Ways to Use Podcasts in the library

I think that podcasts would be great for the classroom or library. It is great for promotion. My podcast is about one of the books that my school is promoting in their new reading program, BECK Reads. This is a program to get students to read at least 3 of the SC Junior Book Award nominees so that the students can participate in voting for the winner. I gave a podcast book talk on one of the books that I read and some of the cool features that are coming about with the second book in the series. I particularly preferred the ease of SoundCloud, because it took less steps and was a bit more seamless than PodOmatic. I didn't run into many issues with doing the podcast- but found that it was easy and relatively rewarding. The beginning of the tract you can tell that I was a little uncomfortable to start off, but the more I talked about the book the easier it got. I assume that the more podcasts you do- the better the experience it is. 

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