Thing 15- Using Podcasts

I think that podcasts could be very useful in the classroom. I know that we have a science teacher in our building that uses them in his 7th and 8th grade classes. He was telling me that he used one this year when they where talking about volcanoes in one of his classes. I plan on using them during my enrichment class like I mentioned in the my previous blog entry. I like the www.podcastalley.com I was able to pick up some podcasts that I can possibly use in class and used juice as my podcatcher. It's nice to have a location to find useful podcasts. As far as whether or not I would get any pushback from my building administrator, I don't think so. He is pretty open as long as it is educational and is meeting the students needs and requirements. He really likes to see technology being used in the classroom and seeing the students engaged. The only thing I could see him being concerned with would be how the students access the podcast. The phones and mp3 players would be out, but the computer would be find. I will have to check at school to see if I can acess the feeds. Our district has pretty good filters and blocks many sites. I can't blog from school without jumping through hoops and getting my user account unblocked for specific sites. I'll check this week on the availability of using podcasts with the IT department. I really would like to use them. It would also be cool for my tech student to create a blog about the lego robotics projects that they do in class.