Podcasts: the world will always follow you in your iPod

Photo by Google images

Hi, girls!

First of all, I’d like to thank you for your patience. As you well know, I haven’t got the broadband at home, so these technological e-tivities can be a problem for me. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the only problem this week: I was supposed to go to the lab B today, but I’m ill! It’s nothing serious but enough to be out of use. I went to a friend of mine this morning to search for podcasts, I hope I did a good work.

Well, let’s talk about podcasts. I had already heard about these word before last Wednesday. I’ve got iTunes in my computer and I saw the word “podcast” there more than once. But I had no idea of what could it mean. I must admit I didn’t strive to understand what it was, always for my being in fear of technology. Recently my boyfriend gave me an iPod (technology is dogging me!). I was flabbergasted when I realized that I could see photos from it! Try to image what my surprise was when I discovered I could even upload podcasts into my iPod…It’s quite amazing, isn’t it? I had never thought about the possibility of listening to news and programs from my portable MP3 player “whenever and wherever you want”, like Sarah said. It could be a useful chance to improve our language skills but I’ve something to complain about the “wherever you want”. I don’t know your situation, but listening to –and understanding- something in English requires me a lot of concentration. I fear that if I’d listen to an English podcast lesson anywhere -let’s say in the train, I could even forget getting off!

Sarah was right: the number of podcasts you can find online is countless! This morning I spent more than two hours searching for interesting podcasts in the Web. The search was less easy than I thought: I ran into a lot of useless podcasts and not all of the interesting ones had RSS feed. This could mean that they aren’t updated regularly but I saved one of them as well, just because it seem to be useful. It's Free Classic Audiobooks. You can download classic audio books, like for example The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain and Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. You can choose to download the MP3 version, that you can listen from Windows Media Player, or the M4B, in case you prefer upload the file into your iPod.

The other sites I chose are the following:

• The Podcast Directory. I chose it because here you can find a huge number (thousand and thousand!) of podcasts ordered by categories -entertainment, society and culture, religion and philosophy, and many others. Then, each category is divided still further. You can choose to subscribe to the category you’re interested in; for example I subscribed to Learning and Instruction (more than 2000 podcasts!).
• LibriVox. It's another way to listen to audiobooks. It could be very relaxing, especially if the narrator has a melodiuos voice. If you subscribe to this feed, you'd receive a chapter three times a week, until the book is finished. A book in serial form directly in your iPod or computer...isn't it great?
• OpenCulture. It's one of the first sites I found in de.licio.us, so you probably know it. It's a podcast collection where you can find foreign language lessons, not only in English, but also in Chinese, Spanish, Arabic, Danish, German, Duch, Finnish, French, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Irish and many others. As regards English learning, some useful podcasts are those of Business English and English as a Second Language Podcast. They're read slowly and clearly in order to let the listener understand as well as possible.
• CNN podcasting. Here you'll find podcast from CNN. They're ordered by topic, title and main podcasts. I subscribed to CNN News Update : if you download these podcasts, you'll listen to the main American news and to the news from all over the world.

I hope these suggestions are useful for you!

SUS (see you soon)!

Martina