Podcasts: Listen and Learn!

Hi boys and girls!

This week I have a new activity to carry out: exploring the world of podcasts! Let's see what this technology represents!

First of all the word "podcast" links together two concepts: I-pod and broadcast. "I-pod" (as everybody certainly knows) is the most famous Mp3, while "broadcast" refers to the world of television and radio.

Podcasts represent a kind of technology through which you can record, download, watch and listen to audio or video files. How can we find podcasts on Internet? In my opinion, there are two possible solutions:

- Podcasts can be found inside a website; if so, audio or video files are attached to other documents.

- Podcasts can characterise a website as a whole; this means that these files are the main subject of the website and the reason for which it exists.

After exploring podcasts in the Net I found three examples which refer to the distinction I made above.

Eslpod. This website consists of learning English as a second language; all its activities are linked to listening an audio file which refers to a specific situation in which the student could be. This example represents the second kind of websites, those where the podcast characterises the whole site. I think it is very useful because audio files deal with social activities in everyday life and sometimes I realize paradoxically that in this field I'm not very good even though someone thinks that these are the simplest things to learn in a foreign language.

BBC. This is BBC's official website where the famous television channel tranfers all the news of the day. Most of its parts consists of written documents; sometimes, however, the document can present an audio or video file in attachment so that people can watch and listen to the news. This example refers to the first kind of podcasts as BBC is a journalistic website where sometimes the presence of audio files helps the comprehension. For me this is very useful because it represents an interesting exercise of listening.

Englishfeed. With this last example I think that the two solutions are linked together. As a matter of fact, this website explains various aspects of English grammar but while you read the pages you have the chance to listen to an English teacher; in this case written documents and audio files have the same importance. I think this can be very useful for us because various exercises are put together: reading, listening and checking pronunciation.

In order to have a direct experience with audio files I surfed into Odeo and I recorded an audio where I've spoken about my impressions of podcasts in general and making reference to the examples I found (sources: Google; del.icio.us); you can listen to my audio file clicking on the buttom that you can find at the bottom of this page.

I hope you have a nice week!!!
Bye
Giorgia

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