Podcasting and Videoblogging

Tonight I finally stole some time to go podcast exploring. There are some very amusing and interesting pieces of audio (and video) out there.

For the task of this course, there are a few podcasts that I explored and below you will find my review of them.

Grammar Girl- Not having been much of a podcast consumer, I didn't expect to know about any previously created podcasts, but Grammar girl was a great site that I've explored before.  Being a LA teacher there were instances in which, I myself, needed to know about a grammar rule (GASP-- How dare I not know, but isn't the true not necessarily knowing everything but rather knowing how to find it?).
But in one of those quests for knowledge I came across her site.

Now, not being a frequent grammar girl follower, I'm not sure how long she's been on this one particular site. It seems there's an entire site of podcasts waiting for the information hungry and she's one of the founders.  In my exploration I listened to numerous, but my favorite was one of her most popular podcasts discussing the difference between Affect and Effect, very informative indeed.

In addition to Grammar Girl, I'd suggest exploring that site http://www.quickanddirtytips.com because they have information on just about everything you can think of.

Stanford University: Oh my Stanford, you've really gone above and beyond huh?  How to educate the masses, right? Stanford has piles and piles of free or cheap lecture recordings available on iTunes. When browsing through the iTunes site it seemed that there were lectures on just about everything.  Another great resource to check when looking for information.

Come See Virginia Podcasts-  I had the pleasure of exploring some wonderful student examples of classroom activities.  These fourth graders created some tourist type podcasts as a class project advertising to people to Come Visit Virginia.  Along with the audio the students added visuals.  Not only are they great examples to see, but the idea could easily fit into many different classroom lesson plans and work for a great range of ages and subjects.

Lastly, the task to find another favorite off the list made me think about video-casting, so of course, where do you suppose I went?  Why Google's Billion Dollar baby... YouTube.

YouTube- As popular as YouTube is, you might overlook it as a video-casting site, but that's the entire foundation of what YouTube is about.  Video-casting allows users to create, edit and publish their videos and YouTube is the publishing site. I don't know about you, but I've looked at all kinds of things on YouTube, from flash dances, to old TV shows, to history lessons, to kids science experiments.  It's such a go-to place for information that my Five year old actually requests that we look a video up on YouTube when I don't know the answer to his question.  Our latest exploration, when my son repeatedly asked how you make bouncy balls, he was frustrated with my answer of "I don't really know".  So to quench his thirst for knowledge, we decided to go to YouTube and sure enough there were many options.  While I was hoping for an actual demonstration video of a bouncy ball factory, we found several science experiment demonstrations for making a bouncy ball at home.  We landed on this video of Dr. Cool.  As cheesy as this video-cast is, it's actually a rather informative demonstration on how to make one of these bouncy balls at home. I could imagine this site having endless possibilities in schools, but you have to get your site administrator to unlock it first. ;)

Enjoy!