Introduction

1. Opinions on Podcasts and Vodcastsby: Kayla Sellers, Aubrey Backes, Laura Johnson, and Jill Freeman Introduction Our group decided to do research about teacher’s opinions on podcasting and vodcasting. Before we could survey teachers for their thoughts, we researched to find out more about what podcasting and vodcasting are. We found that podcasting was very similar to radio programming, but can be downloaded from any computer that has an Internet connection and is capable of playing mp3 audio files. Vodcasting is essentially the same thing, but contains video along with audio. We also found in our research that podcasting and vodcasting can be used many ways in the classroom. Classroom use for podcasting and vodcasting will differ from teacher to teacher, but mostly ranged from ways to enhance a lesson to a way to provide extra explanation for students to reference while doing homework. Conclusion After conducting our research and collecting our survey data, we concluded that podcasting and vodcasting are going to be a large part of classroom curriculum in the future. They are already being utilized today, but are not a major staple in classrooms yet. We came to this conclusion because of the growing umber of web sites about these forms of technology and their uses. We found many sites explaining how to make/create podcasts and vodcasts, where to get them and how they can be used. The information from our survey also pointed towards our conclusion. Questions about how the casts were being utilized in the classroom typically yielded the responses about not using podcasting or vodcasting in the classroom. If we were to redo this survey, we would try to find more participants. We sent it out to numerous educators, but not even half responded. This means that our data is based on a very small number of opinions and experiences. Also if we conducted this survey again, we would ask the same questions because we felt that they covered all the important information on teacher’s opinions of podcasting and vodcasting in the classroom. Method For this survey, we collected the responses of twenty teachers who are currently teaching in the classroom. Our questions included: True or false Do you use podcasts/vodcasts in the classroom? Would you go to a training session on podcast/vodcast? We also included two questions that were fill in the blank. We included several mulitple choice questions including: Where would you get podcasting/vodcasting sessions? What are your opinions on podcasting/vodcasting? What age level is most appropriate for podcasting/vodcasting use in the classroom? asked: Would you rather podcast? Vodcast? Or neither? In total we had ten questions. Findings These 3 charts show that educators are very open to integrating pod/vodcasting into the everyday classroom. Many of the survey respondents knew very well what pod/vodcasting was, and they were willing to use these resources in a variety of different ways. In one of our survey questions 75% of the respondents said yes to attend an instructional session to become more educated in the field of pod/vodcasting. Also, teachers chose a variety of subjects that pod/vodcasting would be most useful in and most teachers agreed that pod/vodcasting belongs in the upper levels of education and not in the elementary classroom. Our group received a lot of great information from this survey on pod/vodcasting. Resources: 1. Bergmann, Jonathan. “Vodcasting Live.” Educational Vodcasting. 2009. PeakEducational Consulting. 10 Sep 2009< http://educationalvodcasting.com/default.asp 2. Meng, Peter. “Podcasting and Vodcasting.” University of Missouri. Mar 2005. IAT Services. 10 Sep 2009 http://www.wssa.net/WSSA/SocietyInfo/ProfessionalDev/Podcasting/Missouri_Podcastiong_White_Paper.pdf. 3. Survey Monkey. 22 Sep 2009<http://surveymonkey.com >. 4. Warlick, David. “What Is a Pod Cast?.” The Education Podcast. 2009. The Landmark Project. 10 Sep 2009<http://epnweb.org/index.php?view_mode=what >.