Adam Curry has been recording a daily 30-minute or so audio essay for people to download to their iPods…podcasting. (I’m actually listening to one now on my laptop.) Looks like fun. Obviously, it’s getting a huge amount of buzz. So I guess the next step is that people don’t even have to read blogs anymore; they can just listen. And, of course, there is an RSS feed for these that we can take and add to our all-in-one feed as discussed below.
Ok…now let’s take this into the classroom, huh? Foreign language students can now read their homework responses which automatically get sent via RSS feeds to their teachers who download them to their iPods or other player to listen to them. Or, the teacher creates a daily broadcast that his students download and listen to. Or, each day, one student does an oral reflection on the class that then gets sent around to kids who miss the class. Or…
Sheesh. So much to know. So little time. But so much fun.
Well, yes and no. I like your language teaching example, but for me, audio blogging really sucks as a medium for gleaning information. I have no patience to listen to someone blather through twelve things that don’t interest me to get to the few sentences that are compelling. Skimming as you read makes blogging work well — it’s part of information literacy to learn to discard what isn’t relevant and focus on what is. It is nice for a getting a one-time sense of the author’s personality, though.
I agree Jeremy…I’m not sold on audio blogging either. But I love the concept as another way for kids who might be into to it to express themselves.
It could be useful for those times when you’re offline – commuting, for example. In that regard it resembles talk radio. I’m not sure how audio hyperlinks would work, though… 🙂
Jeremy is quite right that we can read a LOT faster than we can listen. Reading is a semi-synchronous, semi-linear activity – you can look ahead and look back (not to mention following hyperlinks). Listening is pretty strictly synchronous and linear.
One of my favorite blogs is Lileks. http://www.lileks.com/bleats/index.html
He also has a regular slot on a radio show I listen to. Yesterday it hit me why he works so well on the radio: He speaks clearly, quickly, and pithily (is that a word?) Since he speaks quickly, he packs a lot of content into the time.