Podcasting

I've really never liked the sound of my voice when I hear it recorded, so I'm not going to try to create my own podcast. But I do like to listen to NPR Science Friday on the way home from meetings in Madison, and since I don't go to Madison as often anymore, the podcast version is a way to catch it any time. I have been using my itunes software to capture that and other podcasts, including the Onion Radio News. I can set it to grab the latest episode whenever there is a new one, and keep only the most recent 5. That way I always have something, but I don't fill up all of the space on my device with old stuff I'll never get around to listening to. Sort of similar to the way I maintain my DVR to keep 2 episodes of the Colbert Report and the Daily Show always available.

I really liked the Denver Public Library use of podcasts to present readings of children's books. I can see a big audience for that among young parents, who could check out the book, and use it together with the podcast to take advantage of youngsters' seemingly "natural" inclination to pay more attention to media than to a person in the room. I'm sure that there is some significant amount of negotiation and rights management that would have to go into doing something like that, but it would likely be worthwhile. The teen podcasts from Boulder were less interesting IMHO. Seems if you're going to provide a context for teens to learn about the technology it would be worth doing a bit of curriculum development so what they create is more useful. (I know, only old fogies like me think things need to be "useful" to be good...)