Week 9: Thing 21

Week 9: Thing 21 - Podcasts

 

I found this activity fairly frustrating because of the amount of 'resistance' I encountered in my attempts to navigate through the new world of online podcasting.

For some reason, several links were not working. I could not directly access the Yahoo tutorial on podcasting thru the class link, so I did a google search, and did read a couple tutorials about podcasts. I found the most helpful podcast directories to be the two educational ones because they had clearly delineated categories which made accessing a podcast of personal interest a little easier to find. I could not get to 'podcast.net' as it said the server was unavailable.  I found 'podcastalley' a little cumbersome in trying to locate a podcast to listen to. In many instances, the podcast titles did not readily reveal their topics. 

I did have my 14 year old daughter show me how I can start making my own podcasts using 'garage band' on my Mac laptop.  Watch out world, here I come! 

I located a podcast on hearing loss issues that will be interesting to subscribe to. I was also frustrated that when I tried to subscribe to a couple of podcasts via my google reader account, when I typed in the url given, on google reader, it said they could not be found! I had just listened to them. Obviously there's more of a learning curve here for me to pursue.

In terms of the podcasts themselves, I listened to quite a few, at least to introductory bits. Some are clearly more professionally composed and produced than others.  I liked the ones with clear, crisp audio; the speaker's voice has a lot to do with whether or not I'd want to continue listening.  I also found some with long musical lead-ins to be a bit distracting.....like I wanted them to get to the point--so I could hear the message, not the music (unless it was musical podcast like a radio show). I listened to podcasts from L.A. (English as a Second Language listening practice for ESL learners); Plano, Texas (Brain and Behavior), and one on psychiatry from Australia. I also listened briefly to a podcast on learning Spanish. It was by a native Spanish speaker, and the sound quality was not very good, so I would not opt for one like that if indeed I was trying to improve my Spanish.