Pandora was delightful. I hadn't listened to Joan Armatrading in so long! What a flashback! I had her music playing as I visited iTunes. Right away I subscribed to two NPR podcasts, which I'd been meaning to get back to for a while. (Now if I can only find my iPod…)
Then on to iTunesU. That didn't go quite as smoothly. I did subscribe to RadioLab and also downloaded a couple free videos--one from the Exploratorium After School program. I think I can use their "jitterbug" in our electric circuits unit next year! (At about this point my Pandora station disappeared and I started seeing the spinning ball of death fairly frequently…)
I was surprised by the layout of the K-12 portion of iTunesU. For those of us who don't belong to any of those "bodies" it was not as user friendly as the other portion of iTunes podcasts (organized more by topic). I ended up poking around the NAIS site and the one from Maine, but I had the feeling I should know what I was looking for rather than just browse. It wasn't so easy to tell what grade level podcasts were targeted at either (until you opened one and found out that it was way, way above my/our level).
I like the idea of using more music in my classroom. (I imagine my students get a little sick of my one CD!) But I may have to tap into other people's successes with the iTunesU podcasts. And I may need a new computer here at home!
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