Sunday, February 15, 2009

Week Nine Thing # 21


A podcast is a digital audio or audiovisual file that can be downloaded free by a computer user connected to the Internet. Podcasts are provided by news organizations, advocacy groups, radio and TV broadcasts, and individuals. NPR would be a good example. Many examples can be found on the Thomson Gale database under the multimedia tab.

I looked up Educational Podcast Directory at http://www.epnweb.org and found lots of interesting podcasts but my favorite so far is LibriVox which can be found under the English Language Arts link on the left hand side of the Education Podcast Network main page at http://www.epnweb.org/

LibriVox is an online digital library of free audiobooks from the public domain. LibriVox volunteers record chapters of books in the public domain and release the audio files back onto the net. The goal of LibriVox is to make all public domain books available as free audio books. It was only started in August 2005 and already there are over 2,000 books available. I looked up one of my favorite books and there it was - “Pride and Prejudice”. For many people professionally recorded audiobooks remain an expensive purchase – LibriVox could prove to be a viable alternative. It was simple to add the RSS feed to my iGoogle page.

No comments: