Is There Anybody Out There?: Thing 17

Just nod if you can hear me. Are you feeling okay? Not sure why the whole podcast exploration brought the lyrics fo Pink Floyd's The Wall to mind, but it did. The idea of podcasting is not new to me; I have had iTunes since its inception, and once I bought my first iPod, I subscribed to a Japanese language podcast. Before I knew it, my pod-catcher was overflowing with short Japanese lessons.

It, much like my reader now, overwhelmed me. I finally unsubscribed, but watching / listening to some of these, I think I am ready to try this again. In my reader, I have an NPR feed, and I get podcasts there that sometimes interest me, and it is handy to have them there rather than to rely on my iTunes all the time.

The first one I checked out sounded really cool; it was suggested from the 2.0 site, and I was so looking forward to a podcast called "Dead White Men". This term is of course a running English joke about the canon. But when I got there, I think their server was having an issue; but I subscribed to this one anyway because I'm sure it will be up again soon. So I moved on to another one: Grammar Girl--Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing. This one is really neat, and I could actually envision giving the address to my students.

For my own entertainment, I went to the iTunes podcast search to see if I could find my old Japanese podcasts, but I had no luck with it. However, I found something better. The Onion has news podcasts, which, after listening to the first one "your cousin says prison food isn't so bad", I was laughing terribly. When I tried to subscribe to it with my Google reader, it didn't take, so I put it in my iTunes. I'll just have to remember to go there and listen. Probably won't be sharing that one with the kids as the language gets a little risky sometimes, but the satire is beautiful, so I could prelisten and then determine which I could play in class.

I'm not sure how to incorporate a podcast lessons, as in having my kids do one. My niece is going to Nicaragua on a school trip / project, and her teacher asked all the kids with laptops to bring them because they will be doing a podcast everyday about the activities they are doing. I sent my niece the address to blogger so she could also blog about what they were doing, post pictures of things and keep her family and friends informed, and this morning she sent me the address to her new blog. She is very tech savvy, so I think blogging will fit right into her life quite easily. I don't take my kids on field trips to Dallas, much less to another country, so the whole podcast as a class thing is still a bit nebulous, but it is on the back burner which means it could actually amount to something someday. But for now, I'll just leave it to cook a while longer.