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Podcasting can be an effective resource for enhancing student learning, if its pedagogical use aligns with best practices. Podcasting is easy, requiring only cheap and simple technologies that educators can learn to use quickly. Student feedback is very positive, and this has become one of the major drivers for providing podcasts of teaching material. This chapter discusses the way students use podcasts and the possible impacts on learning. Despite concerns about students reducing attendance at lectures, most studies have shown that lecture attendance is not diminished by the provision of podcasts. Students do not tend to use MP3 players to listen to podcasts “on the go”; most students listen to podcasts directly from home computers, often while replaying PowerPoint slides. The academic staff perspective of podcasting is discussed in relation to advantages and concerns about their use.

Purpose – To examine the results of requiring a book review podcast project within an Adolescent and Young Adult Literature (YAL) course in a teacher education program. This inquiry pays special attention to the ways in which sound can be used to elicit and evoke listener emotion, and enrich and expand pre-service teachers’ (PSTs) technological repertoires as they move forward as teachers in this digital era.

Design – This inquiry into PSTs’ experiences creating and publishing a book review podcast as an explicit part of their teacher preparation program draws on critical literacy traditions and critical inquiry-based pedagogies. The research design included collection of book review podcasts, written reflections from PSTs after completing the podcasts, written peer feedback, and ethnographic field notes. The author uses qualitative methods including critical incident and descriptive review analyses to gain insight into how PSTs engaged an invitation to write, record, and publish a book review podcast. The work is grounded in a conceptual framework around socio-cultural constructions of literacy, new media ecologies, and arts-based literacies.

Findings – In order to create an engaging book review podcast, PSTs must be supported to think about the value and purpose of the sonic as part of the whole composition and provided challenging, sustained opportunities to experiment with different sonic elements as part of their composing processes. Although used in different ways, sound was a critical variable in podcast production. Sound played a vital role in engaging listeners by drawing on and manipulating elements such as pausing, voice inflection, intonation, and music that are not characteristic of the typical book reviews. Despite PSTs’ engagement with and interest in learning how to use and compose with these additional elements, many found this activity to be time consuming and difficult; having no previous exposure to this technology. The nature of this assignment and the novelty of the podcasting platform also shifted some of the typical discourse patterns in online discussion boards from that of academic dialogue, to a heightened sense of encouragement and commendation.

Practical Implications – This inquiry contributes to the literature on teacher education, especially literacy education and English education, and has implications for understanding the unique opportunities and challenges of entering the teaching profession in this digital era. For teacher educators willing to commit to supporting and extending PSTs’ digital literacies, including podcasts in particular, a number of recommendations on designing a similar project are included, with a focus on inquiry-based, student-centered pedagogies.

These unprecedented times of the COVID-19 pandemic have generated a variety of responses from national governments, local communities, and individuals. Using podcasting as a medium, this comparative educational project interviewed individuals living through and adapting to the unprecedented upheaval at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in Mumbai, India and Houston, USA. Using a decolonial lens, the podcasting project unpacks how similarities and differences in structures of privilege, prevailing ideologies, and sociopolitical contexts have influenced the experiences of people navigating this global challenge in two very different cities.

This chapter reflects on findings from this project and builds on it further to explore the use of podcasting as methodology. The inclusion of diverse voices from contrasting contexts provides opportunities for polyvocality and democratic dialogue. Podcasting is a medium that allows for academic content to be presented in an accessible format for education practitioners and the general public, ultimately contributing to reducing gatekeeping in academia. With the goal of contributing to comparative research, this essay closes with a reflection on the dynamics of power in the production of new media from two highly different primarily English-speaking contexts, whilst striving to consistently retain the authenticity of each city.

I present a background on the use and effectiveness of podcasting in higher education, and provide guidance on developing supplementary video podcasts for use in introductory financial accounting courses. Specifically, I discuss how to create, produce, and distribute exercise-based video podcasts that walk students through problems based on material covered during traditional lectures. I distributed a series of 10 exercise-based video podcasts to introductory financial accounting students at my institution during Fall 2011, and documented high levels of student satisfaction in terms of impact on exam performance. Overall, I contribute to the accounting education literature by illustrating how to use a technology in a way that considers the unique characteristics of introductory accounting courses.

The Fashion Design Podcast Initiative educated students about podcasting by having the students share in the teaching activities as part of learning. The faculty implemented Lernen durch Lehren (LdL) or “Learning by Teaching” pedagogy and Bloom's revised taxonomy to encourage and support creativity, independence, confidence, and soft skills (i.e., teamwork, communication, decision making, research, exploration, and presentation skills) with emerging technologies. By creating educational podcasts, students developed skills in new technologies and disseminated information to educate others about fashion design. Faculty and students discovered the benefits and drawbacks with emerging technologies as teaching strategies.

This conceptual chapter explores communicating with transparency and secrecy in public affairs activities in Norway. The tension between transparency and secrecy is particularly interesting with regard to the question of impact of strategic communication on political policymaking processes. As a theoretical framework, we use a double lens to hold the concepts of both transparency and secrets in focus. First, we draw on Fung’s (2013) principles of democratic transparency: availability, proportionality, accessibility and actionability. Second, we use Horn’s (2011) three logics of political secrecy: arcanum, mysterium and secretum. By integrating Fung’s principles of openness and Horn’s logics of secrecy, we construct a model for analysis of a few public affairs activities and practices. Empirical examples of PR agencies’ communicative activities support our model, in addition to interviews with three executives in agencies. The empirical examples illustrate that communication activities rely on top-down controlled information diffusion in PR agencies’ communication activities, such as podcasts and web pages. They use information to develop group identities and to develop stronger relationships to their clients and customers. The social dimension of information in our examples suggests that the agencies are discrete, operate in the background and are careful about revealing their competence and privileged insights.

Purpose – The purpose of the chapter is to provide the reader with an overview of the “Pocket Tutor” project. This project created and implemented read-aloud enhanced podcasts into a University Reading Clinic. The authors provide suggestions for creating, implementing, and modifying the project.

Methodology/approach – The chapter is organized from rationale to creation to implementation. The chapter then makes recommendations for future projects.

Practical implications – The chapter demonstrates how a University Reading Clinic implemented read-aloud enhanced podcasts. These are inexpensive to create and host on free websites for families to access.

Originality/value of paper – As many struggling readers need motivation to read independently outside of school, the Pocket Tutor project provides a viable resource for engaging these readers. Not only are they listening to text at their instructional level, they are also being provided with metacognitive comprehension prompts.