Podcasting

To the Manchester Digital Development Agency yesterday for an ERDF-funded workshop on podcasting. What fun! As a teacher, it makes a relaxing change to become a student again for the morning. You're given coffee, placed in a well-equipped room in front of a laptop, and talked through a PowerPoint slideshow which shows you exactly what to do. Within just a few minutes, every group in the room had recorded a snippet and uploaded it to a site which hosts audio files for free. (We couldn't figure out how they made money.)

Then came the playbacks, and a couple of young women from Rochdale brought the house down with a simple description of their office dog. It's the audio version of YouTube, and proof positive that if you've got something interesting to say, or an authentic way of saying it, then you no longer need anything more than a five quid microphone to plug in. Course, much loftier reasons for podcasting were also discussed, and I'm going to blend my efforts into online learning courses - but it was that one which hit the spot. (And that was not the dog's name.)