PoducateMe: Practical Solutions for Podcasting in Education
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Combatting Absenteeism
So, how do you combat absenteeism in the digital age? Several solutions offered by
professors include:
Making attendance mandatory
Springing more pop quizzes
Assigning a percentage of final grade to class participation
Using class time to discuss material students would be able to download several
days before the class
Putting only a portion of the lecture online
Including answers to potential test questions in the class lecture while leaving
them out of the podcast
Of course, if your podcast covers material not discussed in class, absenteeism is not
likely to become an issue. Furthermore, if you employ visual materials such as slides
during your lecture, a download of the audio portion of the presentation isn’t likely to be
very helpful to ditchers. However, the podcast could be very helpful to a student wishing
to review her notes, sketches or handouts following the class.
Finding and Subscribing to Podcasts
Like blogs, podcasts touch on an incredibly diverse range of subjects: computing, music,
movies, sports, religion, etc. Basically, if it can be recorded, it can be turned into a
podcast. One of the many attractive features of podcasting is that niche subjects, such as
kitesurfing and holistic pet care are available for download. Try finding a program
dedicated to koi fish on the radio! There are literally tens of thousands of podcasts from
which to choose.
With affordable podcasting technology available to every Charlie Lunchbox and Sally
Housecoat with a computer, microphone and Internet connection, the quality and content
of podcasts vary greatly. Of course, there is no software available to filter out the flotsam
and jetsam, but the popular PodcastAlley.com does list top podcasts, as voted on by
listeners. Other podcast directories you might want to peruse include
How to Subscribe to Podcasts
In order for you to subscribe to a podcast feed, you must first download a podcast
receiver application, commonly referred to as a “podcatcher” or “RSS news aggregator
(with podcast support).” There are a number of excellent podcatchers available on the
market, and iTunes is one of the most popular (96% of the subscribers to CareerChat
download the episodes using iTunes).
