Podcasts in Education

Personally I never listen to podcasts, I just don’t find the time to do so. After exploring I struggled to find any podcasts really relevant to what I do as an educator. I found one podcast, but it has not had any added episode since 2014. Most of the examples I found were related to public libraries or secondary level libraries. I did find an episode from Listen Notes, called How to Set Goals for Your Library This Summer from 10 Minute Teacher Podcasts. 

In this episode elementary librarian Amanda Johnson goes through the top 5 things she does in the summer to add to her library. So much of what I do is more than teaching students and she listed some really good examples to things to do over the summer to get ready for the new school year. Her first things was collection development. It is important to see what needs there are for a libraries collection. Taking the time over the summer to dive into this, allows librarians to customize their book orders for the new school year. Amanda introduced a new technology as her second goal. It is a resource called Wakelet. This is a resource that allows users to create a digital portfolio, share resources with students and bookmark frequent websites. This sounds like a great resource and one that could be beneficial to linking students to popular sites in the library. 

Another goal she sets is to work on collaborating with teachers. The library can be an extension of the classroom by connecting the content. This is an important goal for the library and one that I could work on. The more that students are hearing common vocabulary across multiple platforms allows them to connect it to all aspects of learning. A big thing Amanda talked about is exploring the tools that are offered through the school district. This is something that I feel I have done a pretty good job at doing so far. Her last goal was to develop and read a summer reading list. Many students think that all librarians do is read books all day, however, I rarely have time to pick up a chapter book and read. This is something that I do need to work on, so I have current knowledge about what is popular right now. 

I could see using Podcast in the classroom in a secondary level, but not entirely sure how they could be easily utilized in an elementary library setting. If anyone has some ideas, I would love to hear them!