January 31st Assignment

Podcasts

I have a lot of experience with listening to podcasts so this assignment was not that new to me! I’m a huge fan of all the Disney World podcasts as dorky as that sounds. I especially love the Disney podcasts with video of the parks and I’m subscribed to at least 5 or 6 of them. Now that we have that information out of the way, let us move on to educational podcasts. The education podcasts I dabbled in ranged from interesting to pretty helpful.

I loved the SmartBoard Lessons podcast. I thought that the podcast was fun to listen to and gave very helpful tips and resources. I liked the fact that the man was podcasting as he was going through a drive thru at a restaurant. The only problem I had with that podcast was the fact that he wanted that tomato and noodle soup. That’s just really gross. Overall, I will keep this on my subscriptions list. The KidCast podcast was really well put together and flowed as I listened to the audio. The guy really knew what he was talking about and gave great instructions. I will never say vodcast, I promise. He had some really good points on video podcasting. I enjoy video podcasting more that I do audio podcasting, but that is just my taste.

The music in front of the ConnectLearning episode 90 made me think of Napoleon Dynamite. I think David Warlick is a very smart, helpful person, but for me it was a little dry. Maybe that is the little kid in me, but I like something a little more upbeat to keep me interested. If there was something I really wanted to know more about, I would listen to this podcast. EdTechtalk was hard for me to listen to because of the audio. It was grating on my ears, but my ears are very sensitive so it may just be me. Just so you know which episode I had a problem listening to, it was episode 1 on the edtechtalk.com version of the podcast. I may have the wrong podcast, but I thought this podcast was boring. It was basically a question and answer session and I could have found that information from a better podcast.

Macbreak weekly is awesome! I have a macbook and I am a huge fan of Apple. I listened to the podcast about the iPad and I have to say, I really want one. The people in this podcast were fun to listen to and I’m keeping this podcast in my subscriptions list. I don’t even have a digital camera that works other than the one in my computer and on my phone, so listening to A Week in Photography was a little pointless. I will refer my sister to it though; she has her own super nice camera. I did enjoy the podcast even though the content really didn’t match any of my interests. I had already heard about the ‘racist’ digital camera that doesn’t detect some people’s eyes because of their race and the fact that their eyes are kind of closed in the first place. If I ever pick up photography, I’ll subscribe to this podcast.

Overall, I have decided that a great podcast needs to include clear audio, interesting and helpful facts, and a little bit of humor. I hope that when I record my podcast, it will be interesting enough for others to listen!


Mrs. Cassidy’s Class Videos and the Baby iPhone Genius

Mrs. Kathy Cassidy’s class videos were amazing! I was shocked at the technology-centered intelligence the children had. They were so young and precious, but so much more advanced than I was at six or seven years old. I didn’t know what a wiki was until I joined this class and I had no idea how to use Skype until I was 19. I can’t imagine how advanced those children will be in another year or two! I am going to have to brush up on media sources if I ever want to have a class like that. I didn’t know how to use a computer until I got the Muppet Treasure Island computer game in the third grade. Now I am a little ashamed.

Sadly those children can probably do more on the Internet than I know about. I just learned how to make blog entries and I am at least triple the age of those kids. The other video that shocked me was the one year old on the iPhone. That baby could barely even talk, yet he knew exactly what to do to navigate that phone. My dad has an iPhone and I didn’t even know you could zoom in on the pictures. It just shows that this next generation is moving into technology at a much more rapid pace than we could have moved. It is an intimidating thought that my students could run a computer or phone better than I could, but I hope to learn these new concepts quickly!