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How to use Podcasting for Education.

Since I started listening to podcasts, I always wondered if you really could use it for education. Meanwhile I found a lot of interesting podcast feeds that can be used in this manner. I am not a native speaker of the English language, so I am listening to some ESL Podcasts. The most popular might be the “English as a second language” Podcast, produced by Dr. Lucy Tse and hosted by Dr. Jeff McQuillan (http://www.eslpod.com).

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But even if you are a native English speaker, you can use podcasts to learn any other language. Meanwhile there are some good podcasts available for learning French. My favorite is "Learn French by podcast" which is teaching in English but also have native speaking persons for the French so that you will be able to pick up the correct accent (http://www.learnfrenchbypodcast.com).

I'm sure; there are also good podcasts for learning Spanish or other languages. I'm not learning these languages by myself (yet), so I cannot give a recommendation here. But if you use any search engine with "learn Spanish podcast" (or any other language), you will easily find a podcast. All of these are free to download, you just need a computer with a soundcard to listen to them.

By the way: normally it's not very convenient to listen to podcasts at the computer. So if you want to get any podcast as a "take away", you just need an MP3-Player. Almost all podcasts are available in this popular format, so that you just need to download the MP3-file and copy it to your player. Any player will do fine, even the cheap ones. Anyway I would recommend getting an iPod, because it's so much more convenient if you are a regular podcast listener.

Even the tiny iPod Shuffle, that you may get on a small budget these days, will give you more comfort in selecting and organizing your podcast episodes. You will also need the iTunes Software from Apple that you can download for free from their website (http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/). You can get it for Windows or Macintosh. If you need a short description on how to use this software, just have a look at my video tutorials here in the blog.

But there is more than just learning languages, even if listening to podcasts is a very good method to improve your hearing skills in the chosen language. There are also a lot of interesting podcasts for a large number of topics. If you just want to browse around, try the podcast section in the iTunes Music Store. Even if it's called "Store", all (or almost all) podcasts are free, so can subscribe to them directly in iTunes.

Not all interesting podcasts are listed in iTunes, so maybe you want to have a look at several podcast directories. There is odeo for example (http://www.odeo.com) which is not only a directory but also a free host for podcasters. If you want to make your own podcast right now or in the near future, this is a great place to start.

Another famous podcast directory is podcastalley (http://www.podcastalley.com/). If you choose the genre "education", you will find over 1000 podcasts. A lot of them are related to language learning, but you will also find science, history or math. And if you are tired about education, just choose any other genre like "music", "comedy" or "Games and Hobbies" for fun and relaxation.

I discovered podcasting somewhere in the middle of 2005 and since this time it plays a major role in my life. Meanwhile I don't listen to the radio anymore (but I still watch TV). I listen to podcasts around 4-5 hours per day and sometimes it’s hard to catch up with all the interesting episodes that are available on the internet. I'm also producing my own podcasts (some of them are in German) and it is always a lot of fun.

12/23/2006 12:10:54, von Marian , 664 words, 6484 views   Categories: Podcasting

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