EDM 310 Podcasts

The first podcast that I listened to was a podcast called "Technology Used in the Classroom" by Nicholas Martin, Gretta Dailey, and Sarah Dockery. Overall I thought that this group did a wonderful job on their podcast. They had great information about all different types of technology, and they did a great job making their podcast sound like a conversation. Each group member seemed to have a sufficient knowledge of the subject matter that they were discussing, and they held a question-answer session to hopefully answer questions listeners had about certain technology products.

Second, I listened to a podcast titled "Source Materials for High School Teachers on the World Wide Web" by Anne Gardner and Kimberly Hinojosa. Again, I thought that Anne and Kim did a great job in gathering information for their podcast. They collected great information, and I am sure this information will be very useful to high school teachers who listen to this podcast. They covered several different websites in their podcast that all had various tools for teachers and students to use.

Third I listened to a podcast titled "What I Learned from 'Randy Pausch's Last Lecture'" by Lynda Rigsby and Jennifer Lennox. I really enjoyed listening to Lynda and Jennifer's podcast. They had a great topic, and they really did a great job covering the information in "Randy Pausch's Last Lecture." Randy Pausch really is a great role model for both teachers and students because he really shows people why they should reach out to achieve their dreams. Last, I listened to a podcast called "ACCESS Distance Learning: A Work in Progress" by Henryetta Alexander, April Jones, and Ashley Reed. These ladies did a great job explaining all of the uses of the ACCESS program. They covered the many different aspects of the program including the many different components of the ACCESS program and information about dates when the ACCESS labs would be available in different schools.

Although I thought that everyone did a great job with covering information in their podcasts, there were some things that I noticed that could have been improved. A major thing that I really noticed in almost everyone's podcast was using "um." It did not sound like the people were saying "um" because they were not familiar with the information that they were talking about. I think that the "um's" in the podcasts would have really been reduced if the students would have had more practice with recording podcasts. Recording podcasts for the first time is kind of "nerve-racking." Another thing that I noticed in most of the podcasts was that it sounded more like the students were reading rather than holding a conversation. A way to improve this is through a lot of practice, and also having a question-answer session rather than just alternating topics between group members. The last thing that I noticed was short pauses during the podcasts. Most of the groups really sounded like they were very knowledgeable about their topic, so I think that this the pauses were probably due to getting off track in the script.