Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Week #9 Thing #21

I looked at Podcast Alley and found a set of podcasts - childrensbookradio.com.

I tried a variety of podcasts and find those done on poor equipment "unlisten-able." It reminded me of an inservice we had where Tim showed us some of the better equipment for podcasting.

I don't know what kind of podcast listener I'll make. Many seem very, very long and I start multi-tasking, then discover I'm not listening as closely as I should if I want to really get a lot out of it. Maybe it's not my media as far as learning is concerned. I do fine with the radio, but I'm not really try to catch every point when I listen to the radio. I listened to the podcast on Kimberly Willis Holt.

I think it would be neat to have the kids do a short podcast book review.

I created an RSS feed as required. I don't know if I'm just not getting the excitement behind this RSS feed thing or what. The RSS button downloaded for Podcast Alley, not the smaller picture of "childrensbookradio." I didn't see anyway to "Tell RSS" to only look for new info in "childrensbookradio" So as a result it downloaded ten items. The first is "Sex Sells - Top Sex Podcasts." It also included a podcast named "The Alcoholics Guide." Why would I want to weed through all of this? It was like my experience on the RSS assignment where the Spanish paper downloads everything, not just the Basque section that I bookmark and check. Also there were over 200 new items in my Bloglines since I went there last. I have no motivation to weed through them and know the next time I bother going there the numbers will have climbed further.

Am I doing this RSS feed thing incorrectly? Is there a way to narrow the feed to the stuff I actually want? Currently it's far worse than the junk mail in my actual mailbox - and for some reason (which eludes me) I'm actually requesting it! I know I digress from podcast ... but I've gotten so I cringe when I see an assignment say to add an RSS feed.

2 comments:

Raven About Web 2.0 Team said...

I think that RSS has many positives, but the very lack of specificity that you are noting on some types of programs/blogs etc is a real downfall and I don't know how to fix it. I am very selective in what I put on my reader because like you, I don't have the time or the desire to weed through a lot of junk to get what I MIGHT want. So, I don't think you are doing it wrong, I just think it isn't meeting your needs which is fine. We just wanted you to play with all of these things to see if they might be useful in your library.

Ann

teachtopia said...

I am not sure what you found for Childrensbookradio.com

It is a children's book podcast.

go to http://childrensbookradio.com to listen or simply subscribe via itunes..