Week 9, Thing 21: Podcasting

That's my favorite Ask A Ninja video on the Maryland Libraries Learning 2.0 23 Things site! I showed it at staff day while doing a presentation for the St. Mary's County staff on web 2.0 technologies. "A factory that produces apple pie for whales." "Every week consistent content coming at you like KIAAHH, like KIAAHH!" Yeah, I'm a big geek. :-)

I'm not so into the podcast, myself--I don't have an MP3 player (very much want one, promised myself one when I get a job from a new editing client), and for me, it would take too much time to listen to them without having an MP3 player to listen to podcasts when having downtime driving, grocery shopping, cooking, etc. I don't even have time to watch television, so podcasts are something I'd have to add in while doing something else.

I'm impressed with the number of results from Yahoo! Podcast. It seemed like I got better results from Podcast Alley, though, more focused on actual libraries (search: "library"), even though not as many results. I don't like the interface of Podcast.net--too cluttered, and not enough results. I subscribed to NPR: Books from Yahoo! and Library Geeks from Podcast Alley. I might give them a try for a while.

As much as I myself am not into podcasting, I think it would be terrific for libraries. (I'm not into social networking like MySpace or Facebook either, because I am basically an introvert...but I can see their amazing potential!) Some libraries, such as the Orange County Library and the Denver Library, have podcasts--I particularly like the Denver Library's storytime podcast. How awesome would it be to have a story arrive in your RSS inbox every week? Although I think a videocast, for storytime, would be even better, because the librarian could engage the child in the pictures and do some dialogic reading. Not only would the library be encouraging and teaching early literacy skills in the library, but also online, reaching people who have a computer but aren't able to come to storytime. An events podcast, like Orange County's, could be fun too. Lots of possibilities with this technology, and with free tools like Audacity, the price is right too.

I tried quite a few times to record a short podcast on Odeo, but to no avail, it simply refused to save what I had recorded. Ah, well.