Subject Special on PSHE

Our latest subject special podcast on personal, social and health education (PSHE) has been posted and is available via our RSS feed, on our website and is also listed on iTunes.

In this podcast, we feature a selection of podcast channels that will be of interest to young people and educators. All of the podcasts are from the PSHE category of our Podcast Directory for Educators. In this selection you can listen to extracts about a range of PSHE topics including news and updates on health care, the voices of some young people in the Middle East, a first aid introduction to head injuries, improving your brain health and, finally, information about drugs and alcohol.

The five podcast channels featured are:

• Healthcare 411
• UNICEF Radio
• First Aid Advice
• Family Health
• Independent Living Podcast

If you know of other good quality podcasts that would be ideal for use with children and young people, then do please let us know or submit details about the podcast. We are keen to showcase and promote educational podcasts from around the world.

Our theme tune is, as always, "Boogie for Jools" from logicalaudiomusic.com.

Evaluating podcasts

Evaluating podcasts for educational use is a great activity to undertake, especially with children and young people. After all, most new products are designed following an evaluation of what already exists in the "market".

The challenge for educators is writing the criteria. It seems sensible to separate the quality of content from the production quality. In practice, a podcast might have great content but be badly produced with, say, poor audio quality.

Criteria for evaluating the quality of content might be something like:

• the topic is presented in an interesting and imaginative way and the content is well structured and organised
• the quality of production might be: the presenters are clearly heard above background music and effects with any audio effects used to enhance the content and presentation

We have published a PDF version of the criteria and prompts on a 3-page document called "Evaluating Podcasts for Teaching and Learning". This is designed for use by educators and professional development and includes sections on:

• Criteria for evaluating the quality of a podcast
• Criteria for evaluating the suitability of enhanced podcasts
• Prompts for considering podcasts for personalised learning

This publication is now available for download as a PDF file (58 KB). In the near future, we will be publishing versions designed for use with children and young people.

If you are interesting in finding out more, we have included a selection of audio, enhanced and video podcasts to evaluate using these criteria and prompts in our e-learning course: Podcasting Basics.

Subject Special on Technology

Our latest subject special podcast on technology has been posted and is available via our RSS feed, on our website and is also listed on iTunes.

In this podcast we feature a selection of podcast channels of interest to young people and educators. All the podcasts are from the technology category of our Podcast Directory for Educators and you can listen to extracts about a range of technology topics including Wi-Fi, intensive care units, barbecues, portable navigation device, computers and the internet, spam and, finally, a play called "Bloggers: Real Internet Diaries"!

The six podcast channels featured are:

• Go Digital
• Eatfeed
• Bootcamp
• Harvard Extension School's Computer Science: E-1
• TechTipTuesday
• The World: Technology from BBC/WGBH/PRI

If you know of other good quality podcasts that would be ideal for use with children and young people, then do please let us know or submit details about the podcast. We are keen to showcase and promote educational podcasts from around the world.

Our theme tune is, as always, "Boogie for Jools" from logicalaudiomusic.com.

Enjoy.

Improving functionality

As part of our commitment for continuous improvement, we have been improving the efficiency and integrity of the systems that power our podcast directory for educators, schools and colleges.

As a result, we have now implemented a number of changes which has improved the functionality, quality and manageability of the information we present.

The main changes that you will find include:

• additional channel categories to distinquish between the various podcast channels produced at home, school and colleges. It is now easier to locate these podcast channels; for example, by selecting an appropriate age range.


• improved the display of podcast channels within each category, with factual details and information about the channels presented in a more mangeable way (á la Google).


• incorporated a channel search facility with boolean operators on our full list of channels to provide greater flexibility in locating a podcast channel by title.


• included status information (shown opposite) to provide an overview of the directory categories and the number of podcast channels in each.

We trust that these changes will provide children, young people and educators from home, school, college and elsewhere with better quality information and improved functionality when using our podcast directory.