I truly appreciated Deal's article on teaching through podcasting because of its functional value and application. Almost all noteworthy scholarship possesses information that the reader can use, but exceptional scholarship informs and inspires the reader on how to utilize such information. Deal's article provides the reader with a multitude of possibilities for the implementation of podcasting inside and outside the classroom. Personally, I basically am only aware of the concept of podcasting and have maybe used the technology once or twice to listen to a lecture in an online class. However, the article goes into great detail on the specifics of podcasting, how to create podcasts, and the possibilities for educational instruction with podcasting.
One characteristic of the article that I really appreciated was Deal's explanation of the differentiation between simply uploading media files to the internet and podcasting. To my understanding, podcasting is much more scholarly in its approach and maintains documentation of source information similar to that of electronic periodial databases. I was unaware of this differentiation and now have a greater appreciation for the process of podcasting. The article highlights the topic of podcasting lectures for review, and I certainly subscribe to this idea. As a new teacher, one of the most frustrating obstacles to deal with is student absences. You must stay on schedule with the rest of the class but also concurrently catch the absent student up when he or she returns. By recording all of my lectures or class discussions and uploading them into a podcast portal, my students would be able to access class periods that they missed or simply wish to review. As the article states, recording lectures is a very old practice, but I have never thought of recording and podcasting my lectures as a means of review for my students. This would be a fairly easy process that would end up saving my students and myself valuable time and energy. I even have an application on my iPAD that allows me to record my lectures an a Quicktime audio file, email the audio file to myself, and upload into an online databse for podcasting.
Overall, the article continually builds up the argument for implementing podcasting into classroom instruction and review. Like all new technologies, educators will have to familiarize themselves with the format and sacrifice the time to make and upload audio files, but the results reported in the article make the entire process seem absolutely worthwhile. As Deal states in the article, "Podcasting does not contain any inherent value," so educators must depict the application's worth by putting time and effort into utilizing the technology (12).
When I first starting taking undergraduate courses as a sophomore in high school (2006-2007), most of my online courses utilized podcasting in order to distribute lectures. The technology is already widely spread and used, but I foresee podcasting transcending the realm of higher education and reaching into grade schools as students become saturated with technology at a younger age. I also think that, as more secondary school teachers begin to model their instruction after college courses, they will begin to utilize podcasting for discussion recording and review, class discussion, student projects, and video podcasts. I can also see video podcasting becoming a source of teacher evaluation and peer resource.
At the moment, I am not exactly sure how I will implement podcasting in my current classroom. The inconvenient truth of my situation is that I teach freshmen in a low-income school district. Most of my students do not have access to a computer or the internet at home despite our culture's saturation of technology. In fact, while I would consider young people today to be among the most technologically-savvy people in our society, my students struggle with instruction on technology and software. So, I am not sure how they would react to using an online podcasting site so early in their high school career. My hope is that I can eventually create a model video podcast of a presentation on a novel and then have my students view my presentation and create their own. By completing this project, I would have recorded documentation of my students' presentations for future reference, and they would have something to be proud of and share with other students, teachers, and parents.
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