Thing 14: Podcasting and Bookmarking

I created my first podcast this past summer in our Distance Learning course and I loved it! Along with YouTube videos, podcasting is another tool that I want to start utilizing more in my classroom. I think Podcasts are a great way to get the students engaged and can be great for reviews.

Over the summer I created a podcast explaining the four types of Earth Systems which students can use to review that information. If I am going to make a podcast, I want to keep it to 6 minutes or less as I do not want it to be inundated with too much information nor do I want to put students to sleep. I think podcasts that are used within the classroom need to be concise and short to keep you student's interests.

Like YouTube vidoes, I love podcasts for reviewing information. Especially at the beginning of the year, we cover so many topics that students will look at the entire year and this is a great resource to have podcasts to refresh the student's memories. I am definitely trying to incorporate the use of podcasts more into my classroom this year.

I would love to try to have students make podcasts, but with freshman I would be concerned that they would not take it as seriously as they should and that they would be laughing in the background. I guess I will have to see how my students mature over the course of the year to see if I can assign them an end of the year project to create their own podcast as a source of reviewing for the final exam.


I am not as familiar with bookmarking as I probably should be - or maybe it is just that I am not a huge fan of bookmarking. I will admit that bookmarking is especially helpful when you are collaborating with your colleagues or peers, but I never remember to use it!

Luckily bookmarking is easy to do otherwise I would probably never use bookmarking tools. I have used Delicious in my classroom for helping my students gather sources for projects and last spring I did a group presentation on the benefits of Delicious in your classroom, but aside from that, I rarely use it. I do like the fact that you can access all your videos, images and websites in one convenient location.

I think I forget to use bookmarking because there are already so many other tools that I use and this one for some reason just slips my mind! I should make a point of trying to use it in my classroom more often. I think I might try to come up with a project where my students have to use the resources that I have available on Delicious in order to create a poster or paper. One other thing that I like about Delicious in the classroom is that it allows me to monitor which sites my students are visiting as I have already pre-approved them! That makes it easier (especially when using technology in the classroom) because I am not having to monitor my students as heavily or worry that they are on websites they shouldn't be on. Again, I am going to try to use this tool more often as it is really beneficial in the classroom!