The world of podcasts

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Hi,

here we are again, talking about a new tool Sarah taught us in the last few days: podcast. As it can be downloaded on a portable media device such as an ipod or mp3player, it is preferable for us to have at least one of them. If you don't have none of them you can burn the files to a CD and listen on a regular stereo. Fortunately technology develops quickly and here in Italy almost everyone has got a mp3 player. On the market now it can be found at cheap prices. Unfortunately this is not the case with ipod yet, which is still very expensive :(

Podcasts have the advantage to be free; since they are of public domain we don't have to worry about all the legal/illegal stuff!! I read on our English course's blog that some Universities in the United States now offer many lectures online in the form of podcasts. Isn't it great? If you are ill or if you can't go to class for other reasons you don't need to ask classmates or send e-mails to teachers anymore, the material is now available on the Internet. But I think we have to wait a while for this to happen in Italy...

As regards our English learning process podcasts can be very useful. Most of us complain, we cannot improve our listening and comprehension skills because we don't have the chance to talk to a native speaker, now we have it.....at least we can listen to somebody who is speaking in English. The greatest advantage is that having the possibility to download material onto our mp3 player we can listen to it whenever we want. Most of us don't live in Padova and others like travelling a lot, now we can gain time by listening to our favorite English radio or stories while we are on a train or while we are driving our car home.

Surfing the net looking for some interesting podcasts I found one which I think can be of interest to us: Libri Vox. In this site the authors select a book from their collection and podcast a chapter at a time, three times a week, from start to finish. You can visit the Catalog Index or if you don't have a precise idea of what you are looking for you can browse the entire Catalog. There you find an alphabetically ordered list of books, which makes the research very easy. In order to listen to one of the audiobooks you need to get an audiofile onto your computer. It is preferable if you subscribe to iTunes, so you can download an entire book. However I was able to download some chapters of "Jane Eyre" by clicking on ogg vorbis.

Another interesting website I found is English Through Stories. This website is a bit different from the previous one because as far as I understood the stories here are not books. They are divided in episodes and they adress to an advanced speaker of English audience. Each episode is recorded by the host, Doctor Jeff M. coming from the Centre for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles, California. At the beginning of each episode he gives a short account of what had happened before. He speaks rather slowly so it is not difficult to understand what he is telling us. Furthermore the stories are also written down on the site so you can listen and read at the same time.

The third website I chose is BBC-Radio. If you are interested in what is happening all over the world this site may help you to keep always up to date. There are many many links to different subjects and programmes. You can listen to the radio in 33 languages, which I think is very useful for us students. I find the link to 'learning English' very interesting; here you find some quizzes and exams, explanations of words in the news, materials for teacher and much more. If you click on it you get on a webpage which may help you to improve your skills. I mostly like to listen to World news; when I'm home I can watch Sky, but here in Padova I don't have a digital satellite television platform . If you have problems with listening click on the link 'Help with listening'.

Be careful: to play episodes of a podcast you need a software. To listen to them you will need a media player, a piece of software, that can play mp3 files. Your computer should be installed with a media-software. If you do not have appropriate software loaded try to get one. The most popular media players are Windows Media Player, Real Player, iTunes.

C U soon