Friday, August 14, 2009

Bone 21: Podcasting

I have done a podcast before for a storytime Powerpoint and had a lot of fun creating it. However, some of the podcast I have just finished listening to sounds more like Talk Radio--boring. Let's see what I found:

http://www.nancykeane.com/booktalks/
Nancy Keane's Booktalks, Quick and Simple site is loaded with her booktalks on a variety of books. You can download the podcast and listen to it. The audio quality is good and clear, and I enjoyed listening to her voice. This would be a useable site for a Librarian.

MuggleCast #177: The Astronomy Tower of Terror, MuggleNet.com.
This podcast had such a fun, catchy name, so I thought it would be a good listen. However, it ended up being a group of twenty-something friends have a discussion of the latest Harry Potter movie. They use a lot of movie music and cut voice audio. The sound quality is good, but the format rambling and content sparse. Maybe MuggleCast gets better later, but I could only listen to about six minutes before I had to stop.

Free Talk Live: This site advertises itself as "What's on your mind? Unlike those right-wing or left-liberal extremist shows, Free Talk Live is talk radio that ANYONE can take control of. Yes, even you. This is talk radio for politics in a digital age. What is the meaning of freedom? This show is about Liberty with a capital L." Eventhough this site is more my age group, it is endless talking--with opinions that are not supported and questionable.

Overall: How was the audio quality? The audio quality was very clear for all the podcasts I listened to--no problems
Were they interesting enough to make you want to subscribe to them? No; however, I will remember the Nancy Keane site as I can use it in my Library.

What sorts of topics did they cover? Literature, politics, Harry Potter movies, current events.

I will try to make some podcasts this year because they can be very helpful and students like them. I think podcasts work best when they are short and provide something useful. I don't feel they work well as along-winded replacement for Talk Radio.
LKO

No comments:

Post a Comment