Podcasting...

When I was in primary school, my teacher read The Hobbit to us. We made topic books about WWII and the eco-system. We used pen, paper, and occasionally colored pencils.

A lot has changed in a decade.

According to this article, the British government wants to do an overhaul on the current elementary education. Their proposal would make teaching newer forms of media such as blogging, podcasting, Wikipedia and Twitter mandatory at the younger levels.

Seriously? I got to color pictures and these kids get to update their Twitter pages. Jill, I know how thrilled you must be to hear about such young twitterers, being an addict yourself. But, what's even crazier about this proposed overhaul is the idea of teaching about podcasting. I'm not even sure what podcasting is and i'm in college.

I did what any "self-respecting" college student who lacks information does, I went to Wikipedia. As stated by the trusty site, 'A podcast is audio made available for download via syndication. The files are usually retrieved with software applications (generically known as podcatchers) such as Apple's iTunes so that subscribers can listen at their convenience on devices that have intermittent, slow, or are otherwise lacking Internet access.' Basically - a podcast is some version of a 'broadcast' on your ipod, available to you when ever you feel a hankering to listen.

What's so cool about a podcast is that you can find one about almost any topic you want. According to digitalmedia.oreilly creating your own podcast is as simple as 1. producing your own audio files and 2. publishing them somewhere online. Apparently it's super easy and can be done completely free.

Podcasting has endless opportunities. Anyone with a hobby can probably find at least one podcast about their favorite activity. iTunes, for example, offers more than 100,000 podcasts to users all for FREE. We know that Gen Y loves free stuff...With podcasts ranging from CNN to Sesame Street it's easy to find something you like.

It's cool to see that kids could be leaning how to podcast in school. It's a growing medium that is vastly accessible and having knowledge of these technologies will prove very handy in the years to come.