Podcast Anyone?

The first Podcast I chose to listen to was SmartBoard Lessons. It was very cheesy and lacked the luster required to have my full attention. The two hosts of the cast kept cutting one another off with jokes and random comments like radio personalities on a bad morning show. The quality of the audio was fantastic and I found it interesting that they can host a Podcast over the internet without any sort of lag in the stream.

The next Podcast I chose was Kidcast. First of all, I liked the custom introductory music. The host spoke well and in a way that people could easily follow him. I enjoyed the episode I listened to. It was about audio Podcasts versus video Podcasts. He argued that in strictly audio casts, the host has to rely on very descriptive language to set a scene whereas video casts, people can use not only speech, but also body language to communicate.

The third Podcast I chose was EdTechTalk. The first thing I noticed was that the shortest Podcast on the list was thirty-eight minutes! The longest was one hour! I am not sure what the general demographic of people says about free time, but I would not sit and listen to a one hour Podcast. They should try to make it short and to the point. I found a little irony in this Podcast. I have been watching numerous videos and discussions about how education needs to get away from the traditional lecture-style environment, but here I am sitting and being lectured on a topic; not by a teacher in a classroom, but by an audio file.

The last Podcast I chose was a bit of a wild card. It has nothing to do with education and technology in the classroom but I figured it would be interesting to see what came up in the search. I found one called Special Ops Paintball. It is a Podcast that is all about a type of paintball called "woodsball" or "scenarioball". It can be found by simply typing in the words Specail Ops Paintball into the search bar. Specialopspaintball.com is the leading supplier of scenario paintball gear, parts, accessories and apparel. Many of their products are made to military specifications so they look and feel like the real thing. They were mainly videocasts from what I could tell, and the ones I downloaded took some time. Besides that, they were interesting and informational. Still I wonder, does the fact that these people know they are being recorded make their jokes cheesy or is it just me?