Tech BFFs: PodOMatic

 BFF is an acronym for “Best Friend Forever.” These websites and tips are so good that they will become your technology BFFs!

Usually, I avoid big dinner parties like the plague. But a friend invited me to a fundraiser for an organization doing great work so I reluctantly attended. A dinner conversation with Tremain Jackson, Library Director at one of our city libraries introduced me to the instructive potential of Podcasts. He posts frequently to a Podcast channel he created for our library.

Podcasts are a type of digital media consisting of an episodic series of audio, video, PDF, or ePub files subscribed to and downloaded through web syndication or streamed online to a computer or mobile device. Source

Podcasts are great for use in your classroom learning centers, as a differentiation option for auditory learners and a great Web 2.0 inclusion tool.

The most intuitive (and free!)  application for creating your own podcasts is PodOMatic. With PodOMatic you can create, record, and publish an audio or video podcast without having to install any software on your computer. Most of the time, PodOMatic is allowed by school filters. Here is a great tutorial pdf document from the USF College of Education Laptop Initiative that will walk you through the easy steps to create your first Podcast.

Here is a podcast I created for my online class, “Children’s Authors on the Web: Online Sites that Motivate Students to Write”. This podcast discusses the importance of reading amid so many distractions and the possibility that reading engenders empathy.

Take yourself out to dinner and script your first Podcast tonight…over dessert!!!
Sources used to create the Podcast:
The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time, by David Ulin
13 Ways of Looking at the Novel, by Jane Smiley
Powells Books website: http://www.powells.com/
Background Music: “The Swan” by Claude Debussy