#20. Podcasts (week 11)

For some reason this technology has never grabbed me. I appreciate that audio and video are important and any technology that makes it easier to get to these and use them is a good idea. But for reasons that elude me, podcasts are up there with flossing and tire rotation in terms of excitement. I've downloaded plenty and rarely have listened or viewed more than 30 seconds. Several sites I check regularly use podcasts to distribute information and I almost never listen and never all the way through. I have listened to recorded books, hours and hours at a stretch but for some reason this is different.

I realize what I like or don't like isn't the point of these exercises but for some reason I felt like it was important to mention this.

On the other hand, I think using podcasts for distributing course information makes perfect sense. Well, almost perfect. I've noticed in a lot of cases that audio alone doesn't always convey all the content -- chalk talk or PowerPoint presentations -- and that many video presentations don't capture the presentations well when things are happening in more than one place. The fact that it is technically easy to produce a podcast doesn't mean that it is easy to create good ones.