Podcasting

A podcast (or non-streamed webcast) is a series of digital media files (either audio or video) that are released episodically and often downloaded through web syndication. The word usurped webcast in common vernacular, due to rising popularity of the ipod and the innovation of webfeeds. (This definition is according to Wikipedia).

The beauty of podcasting is that it can be downloaded automatically to your electronic device due to RSS ( Really Simple Syndication).

"Of course, to really take advantage of podcasting, you need a high speed Internet connection. If you have access to this, you can plug in your mp3 player before you go to sleep at night, and in the morning it is full of fresh audio content. What allows you to do this is a piece of software usually called a "podcast receiver," such as //Juice//, the cross-platform application that is free to download from: []. Once you have this, here are the stages you go through:
 * Click on the subscriptions tab in //Juice// and then the ‘+’ sign that enables you to ‘add a feed’.
 * Click on the RSS feed button of a podcast you want to subscribe to.
 * A simple copy and paste of the address (URL) of the RSS feed will subscribe you to the podcast.
 * You’ll now see the podcast episode details load in the lower window of //Juice.//
 * Whenever the podcast is updated, and so long as you are running //Juice//, this program will automatically download the new episodes to a directory you specify."

What I really like and prefer is Apple Itunes, it's very simple to get podcasts there:
 * Download Apple Itunes and it's available on http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/
 * After it's downloaded, open it and go to ITunes store and write in the search bar in the right corner anything you are interested to get podcasts about. For example, if you are interested to get podcasts about English teaching/learning, you should try ( ESL, EFL, EAL, or just English language) and see search results.
 * Just go and click on the podcast you want and subscribe. Now, you will get podcasts when you open Itunes and connected to the Internet. However, if you did not listen to Channels you subscribed in for a period of time, you will have to go again to these channels and subscribe again.

The importance of listening to podcasts is:
 * Providing an authentic language experience to your students aside from the classroom.
 * Making English part of their daily life, as they can listen to these podcasts wherever they go taking them on their MP3s

This is a really great link for many websites that you get podcasts from :

http://iteslj.org/links/ESL/Listening/Podcasts/

"The range of EFL/ESL podcasts is growing, and many are supported by transcripts and exercises. Jeff McQuillan’s ESL Podcast <[|http://www.eslpod.com]> is not only the most popular of these, it is also one of the most popular podcasts of any genre, having a very large audience (more than 7,000 regular listeners)."

For more information about podcasts and using podcasts in classrooms, go to this useful article, http://www.tesl-ej.org/wordpress/issues/volume9/ej36/ej36int/

Most of information provided in this page taken from; http://www.tesl-ej.org/wordpress/issues/volume9/ej36/ej36int/