A podcast is a digital recording made available over the internet for download to an iPod or other music player. These pod casts can be subscribed to and are automatically downloaded for you to listen to when you have time. There are many pod casts available on iTunes and other audio sites, but they are not limited to just that. You can create your own pod casts! Teacher's can record their voices into pod casts and use them as a different sort of lecture that students can listen to at home. A great tool that I explored this week was Voki. Voki would be a very great tool to use with younger students in the classroom as it allows you to set up an avatar for yourself that looks like it is speaking what you had recorded earlier. A very engaging tool that students can have some fun with when they are using it! I don't think that I would use pod casting tools as part of my educational activities since I can't think of anything I could use it for. To me, this is a tool that would be more effectively used by teachers if they wanted to upload recordings of their lectures for students to listen to, particularly could be useful for online courses. This isn't something that I would add to my PLE.
The second tool we looked at was screencast's. Screencasts are great tools to help the visual learners. A screencast records your voice as well as what is going on on your computer screen. These are great for instructional video's and showing someone how to do something on the computer. One of the screencasting tools we looked at was Jing. Jing is free and allows you to create screencasts easily. Screencasting is something that I can see myself using in the future, since I am usually the one that helps out friends and family with their technical difficulties. It would allow me to record and show them how to do something without actually physically being there. This is something that would likely fit in well with the rest of my PLE in the creative section, since it is a tool that allows me to create something to express my ideas.
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