I have fallen in love with podcasting! I listen to podcasts every day, including David Warlick’s Connect Learning, This Week in Tech, Diggnation, The Educational Mac, and several others. Even as a child I enjoyed listening to talk radio. Of course, my friends all listened to music and thought I wasn’t very cool because I listened to some old person blabbering on. Even though it wasn’t cool, I would listen to AM talk and to NPR whenever I could. When listening to talk programs, I would suffer through conversations and new stories I was not interested in, just to hear the parts I really wanted. With podcasting, I’m not subjected to many commercials and I get to choose what I listen to and when I listen to it. I don’t subscribe to any podcasts about sports, because that’s not what I’m into. I obviously have an interest in technology and education, so those topics often make up my podcasts. I’ve essentially created a radio station personalized for Tony Vincent.

As teachers, it’s impossible not to bring our loves into the classroom. How could I resist simply listening to podcasts when they are so easy to create with technology we already have? I just needed a real purpose for putting together a podcast - and that purpose was to celebrate the end of a unit of study. I developed a format for our podcasts, which divides each show into segments. The host is the student who introduces the segments, which are written and recorded by different students. This format is not only interesting for the audience to listen to, but it gives a structure that helps students write for the podcast. At Willowdale, we call the podcast RadioWillowWeb (search for it on iTunes!).

Of course, I couldn’t resist putting together a podcast of my own. There are thousands of podcasts out there, so my topic needed to be something unique of which I had knowledge: handheld computing in education! Sure, there isn’t really that many people out there who are interested enough in this topic to listen to a podcast about it, but that’s the point. Podcasts don’t have to appeal to everyone.  To listen to my podcast, SoftReset, go to http://learninginhand.com/softreset/index.html

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