MILEICT 2014: Week 6: Podcasts and their use in ELT

Image taken from: podcast-marketing.com

As new generations have grown up under the development of technology, it is very common that students nowadays know how to use most of the available technological resources in the web for different purposes, but are they really useful for them? How can we integrate them in our classrooms?

Nowadays with the common use of social networks, people have the chance and the means to create videos and even mp3 audio and shared it on the web. One of the multiple tools for getting your own radio style talk and share it to the world is the podcast.

To define what a podcast is Van order (2013) explains that “a podcast is a digital audio file (usually MP3 or AAC) made available for download on the internet through an RSS 2.0 feed.” Starack (n.d) explain that the word “podcasting” is a portmanteau combining the words “broadcasting” and “iPod” and Merriam Webster defines Podcast: a program (as of music or talk) made available in digital format for automatic download over the Internet. So we can say that it I program that was designed to produce and use mp3 files in an i-pod. Then it is not a coincidence that I learnt about their existence by using a i-pod, and consequently, when referring to podcasts the first word that came to my mind was “i-pod”, because in those devices you could easily upload podcasts.

Image taken from: nkilkenny.wordpress.com

To be honest, I have never used them before and I preferred working with videos when I wanted to prepare a special activity for my EFL students. However, after reading a little bit more about the different types of podcasts in The Instructional Innovations Blog I must confess that my perception about them has dramatically changed.

I did not have idea of how powerful and useful tools podcasts can be in ELT. Basically, they offer teachers the opportunity to record their own material, so they can have what they really need. This represents some kind of evolution in the material designing area, as we can prepare different activities with different purposes and using authentic and contextualized material in our classrooms.

According to what it is described in The Instructional Innovations Blog, there are four types of podcasts (audio casts, video podcasts, enhanced casts and screencasts) with different characteristics that may be very useful in virtual environments, but also may offer some innovation to the traditional ones. For instance, with the traditional and best known audio cast we can create new listening comprehension activities by our own or even ask students to create their own recordings for several purposes. Video podcasts could substitute traditional role plays or just design new types of evaluation. Enhanced casts and screen casts could be a great option for that shy student, who hates cameras or speaking in public. So basically you may combine the activities that better fits your class context and real situation.

Moreover, apart from being very easy to use it let us to empower students with the use of new resources for other purposes different from just having fun.
Here there is an example of a podcast:

listen to ‘My Welcome Podcast’ on Audioboo

And here there is a video realted to the use of podcasting in the classroom: