Week 9: Thing 21 - Podcasts

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I've been having fun browsing the various podcasts available through iTunes. So many, that surely everyone can find at least one that is of interest or pertinence to them. One that I've subscribed to for awhile now is NPR's Book Reviews. I have a feed going into my iGoogle page so that I can always see what the latest review features.

As far as creating podcasts, I'm hoping that our students get more involved with this tool now that we will be getting Macs in our school. In the past, we've used Audacity on our PC's, but it simply isn't as user-friendly as with Apple's GarageBand. Since I recently bought a MacBook Pro, I've been having a bit of fun this summer playing around with podcasts and put a welcome podcast on my library website through Glogster (another great tool that was discovered thanks to this class!)

I'm really impressed with the work that our district's middle school has done with podcasting. With much help from the library media specialist, Craig Smith, the principal broadcasts school news each month and posts them on their homepage. And on the library website, the library media specialist has his own video podcasts of book reviews. During the school year, you can hear book reviews from the students. Did I mention that they have a Mac in the middle school? No doubt about it in my opinion, Macs make multimedia projects a cinch compared to Windows!