Educational Podcasting

The lion’s share of buzz at the 2005 National Educational Computing Conference (NECC) in Philadelphia centered on the boundless possibilities of using podcasts in the classroom. In fact, the Apple booth even had loaner iPods and demonstrations on how easy it is to download podcasts.

Another important milestone in educational podcasting is the announcement from Odeo that they are now open for public beta. According to Odeo co-founder Evan Williams (one of the brains behind Blogger) invites are no longer required to try Odeo.

Why is this such an important development for educational podcasting?

Like Blogger, Odeo simplifies and makes podcasting accessible to the masses. Not only will students and teachers will be able to use Odeo to locate and then download audio content, but it will also provide them with the software and tools to be able to create (via Odeo Studio) their own podcasts.

One educational podcast pioneer, Mr. Mayo a sixth grade teacher from suburban Virginia, has already begun integrating student podcasts into his classroom weblog. This is a great example of a teacher using technology in constructivist ways in the classroom.

One of the coolest features about Odeo is that a lot of the audio content is being added to the catalog by the Odeo community. BlendedEdu will also be scouring the web for educational audio content feeds and adding them to the Odeo catalog. We will be tagging our picks “BlendedEDU”, so be sure to look for this tag in Odeo!

Links

• Odeo
• NECC
• BlendedEdu+Podcast

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