Podcasting

Podcasting, how might I use thee?

Shall I... kidding, I'm not going to write poetry. I have little to no love for the subject despite being an English teacher.

Seriosuly, though. I'd love to have a system set up where I might record the meanderings I call lectures as podcast and them make them available to my students. The reality may be a few years away though. The digital divide makes this a difficult if not impossible task because while I can require tasks which might require internet use, I would be hard pressed to require tasks that require heavy daily internet use. There are a few of my students that have to use the school's library or a public library for their internet use and I can't rightly demand they do this nightly.

In fact, the worst of it is that they are so shy or reticent to admit this that I can't even say a precise number of students whom this effects. Similar to this, I had a student tell me that she had no way of getting her paper typed at an uncle's house to school because she had to borrow a friends' usb drive to do it. After she told me that I immediately contacted the tech department to see what we could do about identifying these students and getting them a cheap jump drive. I mean, if I've got students suffering this much from a lack of tech, how can I expect them to be online listening to a lecture? Not to mention we have less than adequate facilities for doing it as a class in the building. /sigh

In 3-5 years I bet I won't have this problem, but I guess a man an only play the hand he is dealt.