Advantages and disadvantages of podcasts

I would like to have a look at some brief points on the advantages and disadvantages for teachers and pupils, when it comes to using or creating podcasts.

To start with, when used correctly podcasts are able to achieve great benefits when it comes to a pupils learning. This can include recordings of lessons so that if a child is unable to attend school, they have the ability to not miss out on what their classmates have learnt (Beauchamp, 2013). In contrast, Walls et al. (2010) states that children may not be as eager to use podcasts as some people may think. This could result in children not willing to listen to podcasts at home or outside of the classroom, meaning the teacher may have wasted time creating them.

The Guardian (2007) explains that podcasting is a benefit to communicate with parents. For example, new letters can include very important information about a child’s school and upcoming events, but parents do not always read them. Podcasting can allow parents to either listen in the house or when driving to work, and become aware of the school’s news via the podcast. Another benefit of podcasts as stated by McGarr (2008) is that it can be used to just summarise lesson material or even cover brief explanations of past session content to enable pupils to prepare for tests. This saves pupils having to listen to a full lesson recording and potentially become distracted.

However, when it comes to learning, sometimes the old fashioned way of pen and paper can be best. Beauchamp (2013) agrees that podcasting can become difficult when trying to give information such as web links for pupils, for example, online home tasks. In this situation it could be more beneficial to have written or printed out notes for students to look at which include important information and support like web addresses.

References:

Beauchamp, G. (2013). ICT in the Primary School From Pedagogy to Practice. Hoboken: Taylor and Francis.

Cole, G. (2007) 'Why every school should be podcasting', The Guardian, 18 September. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2007/sep/18/link.link16 (Accessed:17 January 2017).

McGarr, O. (2009). A review of podcasting in higher education: Its influence on the traditional lecture. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 25(3), pp.309-321.

Walls, S.M., Kucsera, J.V., Walker, J.D., Acee, T.W., McVaugh, N.K. and Robinson, D.H., (2010). Podcasting in education: Are students as ready and eager as we think they are?. Computers & Education, 54(2), pp.371-378.