Blogging is definitely more my niche. However, I got an iPod for Christmas(yeah!) and the wonderful thing I have discovered is using it to create my own radio station in the car. I seem to have no trouble listening to shorter podcast stories while in the car and I have found a lot of fascinating podcasts. The other thing I’m enjoying is it helps me stay enthused but I don’t have to read.

In my job, some days I get so tired from skimming so many articles or reading email online that it is nice to learn something new while listening instead of having to use my eyes.

And I also like that I can subscribe to podcasts of interest and they come to me–I don’t have to seek them out.

I have to confess though, I didn’t feel this way about podcasts until I had a way to make them portable. That has made the difference in their usefulness to me!

Every learner is different. This is why we can’t expect all students to learn using the same methods. Not all students are going to be interested in blogging. Others won’t want to listen to podcasts. I think giving students options for how they complete their assingments is the best way to resolve this. As long as they learn the content, and they can prove they learned it in a valid way, it shouldn’t matter the format in which it is delivered.

BUT I love what Cool Cat Teacher is doing over at her blog. She is recording and podcasting her classes so that students have access to class discussions. Link here.

If I had this in high school, or if I had access to it as a teacher, I really think that it might have made a world of difference. I don’t learn this way – but I respect that lots of kids do and I always wanted to make sure that everyone had access to my content area.

I’ve been playing with podcasting and not sure how I would use it in my world – so blogging trumps podcasting for me too – at least for the moment!!