Bon mot

You’d think I would have been all over podcasting as soon as I heard about it, and I’ll admit my interest was piqued at the beginning, but it wasn’t until yesterday that I really caught the vision.

Language learning. It’s brilliant, and perfect for podcasting. You can get bite-size chunks for free (rather than exorbitant fees), which is great because you probably don’t have time to listen to a whole 30-minute lesson, and it’s easy on the podcasters as well because they don’t have to spend as much time recording. I’m now subscribed to podcasts teaching Spanish, German, French, Italian, and Russian. :) (The iTunes podcast directory doesn’t have as many languages as I’d like, but it’s a start.) The short length of most of them (under five minutes) is really nice, because I can listen to them easily while making breakfast, and I don’t feel any heavy obligation to make a large chunk of time for it.

Video podcasting also creates new possibilities. For example, I downloaded a few episodes from MyGermanClass.com (the Ubel Knübel stuff) and from Rolling R’s. The Ubel Knübel videos have the text of the dialogue displayed at the bottom of the screen, so you can see what they’re saying. Similarly, Rolling R’s has quite nice text overlays of the words they talk about, with the inflections (the -o in llevo, -amos in llevamos, etc.) highlighted. It’s great.

For a slight change in topic, I put Beowulf on my iPod in Old English. Next I just need to get all the Middle English texts from my class on there… :) I’ll admit that the slowness in loading the notes (if you have a lot of them) is annoying, but it’s not the end of the world.

Back to podcasting. The entertainment value doesn’t really appeal to me all that much, but the educational value is amazing. I also downloaded some National Geographic videos, a Discovery Channel travel series on China, and a reading of Cicero’s Pro Caelio. This is cool. :)

And I’m very tempted to start podcasting myself, but I don’t have time. I don’t have time. I don’t have time. :P

No, Ben, you don’t have time. I’ll keep reminding you in case you start to forget.

As for the language podcasts… that makes me almost want to give in and buy an iPod. But, alas, they remain too trendy and too expensive. Enjoy, though–sounds like you have some cool stuff.

While I have been gushing about what cool things the iPod can do, I’ll admit that they are trendy and expensive, and I don’t particularly like either of those things. I never listen to it when I’m outside walking around, and I never shall. Nor am I particularly pleased that I’ve spent $250 (plus tax) on a material possession that probably wasn’t necessary — okay, it wasn’t necessary. So I hope these iPod posts don’t sound like boasting or anything like that. They’re more of guilty rationalizings and justifications, really. :)