Have you heard a podcast? Created one? Well it just might be a tool you can use in your science classroom. A podcast is an Internet "radio broadcast" that you can either subscribe to or create yourself. The possibilities are endless for use. You may want to have your students subscribe to a science based podcast and get information for classroom discussion. You may find that your students are ready to create a broadcast to help your school become more environmentally friendly and host a weekly show on what they can do to help make the school more green. Whatever it may be, podcasting can be a fun way to engage your students.

Please contribute to the podcasting page. Add any resources or ideas you may have or have already used.

Podcast Consumer Find Being a consumer of podcasts is the first step to take. Check what's out there. Do you have an interest in science? How about health? How do you go about finding podcasts and listening or viewing them? Here are a list of places to search for podcasts. http://podcasts.yahoo.com http://www.ipodder.org http://www.podcastalley.com http://www.epnweb.org http://www.podscope.com http://www.podcastingnews.com/forum/link_7.htm Subscribe The first step in subscribing to a podcast is to have a "podcatcher" or software to get the RSS feed. Probably the most popular software is iTunes. It is free software from Apple that runs on both Windows XP and OS X. iTunes Download Page Another place to find a list of podcatchers is: http://podcastingnews.com/topics/Podcast_Software.html iTunes has a great directory of Podcasts built right in to the iTunes Store. If you do a search you will see a section for podcasts. There are others, though, that may not be listed in iTunes. Listen Once you have your podcatcher installed, you can now listen to them or sync it with your MP3 player and listen "on the road" so to speak.

Podcast Producer With the technology we have available at our finger tips today, being a producer of podcasts is as easy as opening your laptop. Okay, I may be exaggerating a bit but not much! The most important part of the podcast is the design and scripting of show or episode. There is much more prep time than there is computer time. These are some things to consider before you get started. Pre-Production/Design Script - What format? Journal, Interview, Discussion Bumper Music (Jingles) Using Podsafe music (make sure your additions are copyright friendly - consider Creative Commons works) Roles for the students - Technical and Non-technical Production/Recording Recording Software - Audacity, Garageband Or other recording hardware - ie: digital recorder Post-Production/Editing Cleaning and editing audio Adding jingles, sound bytes, etc. Distribution/Publishing RSS Generator - Podcaster, Casteasy, The RSS Buddy, Server software Server - A place to upload the podcast - Manila, Web Apache, IIS

Interesting Podcasts The Nature Podcast - http://www.nature.com/nature/podcast/ This Week in Science - http://www.twis.org/ Science at NASA - http://science.nasa.gov/podcast.htm

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