The podcast as an effective teaching tool

Zusammenfassung

New technologies have an impact on education, educational methods and learning processes. The goal of this paper is to study and reflect on the Podcast as a teaching tool. Certainly, many institutions on the education realm have bet for investing less in text books and more in technology-enhanced learning. Some of the benefits of the Podcast as a new tool are related to their availability 24 hours a day, which enable the student to listen to it whenever most convenient and for multiple times. First of all, we will have a look at different ways in which Podcast can be used to enhance teaching and learning processes: • Students can create their own podcasts related to the teaching contents and syllabus. In order to do that, they will need to master some basic technical skills, but also to assimilate certain basic contents, concepts and ideas of the course unit in order to transmit those within the audio format of the podcast; • Another alternative consists that the teacher records the course units within a Podcast format. Students can then listen to it several times and assimilate the notions and explanations.This is as well pretty useful for missed classes. A variant of this option is that the teacher recommends as teaching materials, not only readings, but also certain audios -podcasts-. Next, we will cast light on empirical evidence of the use of podcasts in the different courses I teach: we will cover each step from the technical skills to use, to the topics to choose, the creation of small groups among students, the podcasts they have produced and the special effect on our blind students and how we have worked at this respect with the Unit for Disabled Students at the University. The method we have applied to our paper is 1) descriptive analytical, based upon the exam and consideration of scientific articles and literature related to this subject; and 2) empirical, which brings to analysis and reflection recent experiences applied in higher education institutions and centres. Our conclusions express the reflection and analysis of both approaches