Podcasts

Podcasts! I am geeking out a bit over this topic but what can I say?! Podcasts are great for just about anyone. They're pretty much like talkshows about any topic you can think of. My brothers follow some on sports and politics and some friends follow others on gaming. Listeners can usually send comments to the podcasters and have them discuss those topic for their next podcast. I really see this being used more for the upper grades (middle school and high school) but I did use it twice for the elementary level kiddos.

One instance was to record myself reading books. Students would then choose the audio file of the book they had chosen and they would follow along with their book as I (in the audio file) was reading the book.
Another instance was when I created accounts for the students who were struggling readers. I recorded them trying to read 3 books and sent those books home for them to read with parents. The parents were able to log on and listen and follow along to see which words their kids were struggling with. They would also listen to my voice to know what techniques I was telling the child to use and how to praise them so that they may do the same with their child.
As for podcast hosting sites are concerned they are tons to choose from but they are not all the same. The one I used for the above projects deleted them after a certain amount of time. Definitely a huge bummer since it took a lot of work and I most certainly learned my lesson about better researching the podcast host sites I use in the future.

Some very good options are soundcloud, podbean, podomatic.

SoundCloud

This site is mostly used for musical artists to upload their music and get heard. SoundCloud is fairly easy to use and even allows for graphics to be added as background images. It offers a free trial and after that would require a payment of $7-$15 a month depending on the plan you choose. A major plus for SoundCloud is that it has an app as well so it makes for listening and recording on any device an even easier task.

PodBean

This site was by far my favorite to use. I liked the interface which was user friendly and it also has an app as well. There are also options to get paid memberships that would grant more bandwidth, storage and podcast channels. I liked it so much that it was the one I used for my own podcast.  I found it a lot better to use using my phone since I was able to record directly on it instead of having to use separate software to record and then upload.

Podomatic

This site is a great site if you are an avid Facebook user. Its interface is similar to the social media site and also has a section of trending topics and podcasts as well. Podomatic has an app as well but from what I was able to see it did not allow the feature of recording a podcast from the app. Not too sure if this is something that can't be done on iOS but can on Android.

Below is my podcast which is a read aloud of a short story from a storybook collection.
Happy podcasting!!!