Podcasting, A Reinforcing Educational Tool

                   Podcasting is and will continue to change the future of education. Weather related school closures such as snow days will be a thing of the past. Instead of losing that valuable school day, you can stream the class online. This will be particularly useful in areas up north where students have to stay late into the summer because of many snow related school closures. Also, if a student is sick for a few days, you can still get the student involved, as if they were in class. Podcasting can really change the future of education, it just needs to be done correctly. Students and teachers should be able to communicate with each other, as well as the students amongst themselves. In a subject area such as music podcasting can be used as a constructive practice tool. Students can play for each other and critique one another. They could also play together, and I the teacher can watch and give comments and other constructive feedback. With all this practice and constructive feedback the band will surely sound phenomenal. This type of experience can be duplicated in all subject areas and fortunately is not too complicated for the teacher to set up. It's even easier for the students to use and I feel that they will enjoy using this very versatile and educational tool. 
                   Some concerns that people have about podcasting is that if a student is streaming a podcast and has a question can they "raise" their hand and ask that question. And more importantly is that student likely to go out of their way to type a message in time and send it to the teacher before they continue on. For podcasting to be effective there needs to be a "raise hand" button where the teacher can see on their screen and just like in a classroom setting ask them what's their question through a one on one video chat. If the question proves to be a useful one it can be streamed to the rest of the class. When the teacher is in a one on one chat there could be a screen with notes and other helpful items. Podcasting can be extremely useful it just needs to be done correctly.          
                  Podcasting linked up with video chat, instant messaging , and social media is a good way to harvest what the students are interested in and really integrate it into our curriculum creatively and effectively. It's extremely efficient, and more and more schools are using it on a regular basis. Because of podcasting and other technologies that go along with it, many parents are turning to online schooling for their children. We will continue to see this trend grow and quite possibly one day much of our public schooling that takes place in the classroom will be transferred to the computer screen.