I don't consider myself to be technologically inclined, so I found the podcast project to be quite difficult. Luckily, the members in my group were familiar with the Audacity program, so I was able to catch on. I think that the greatest challenge for completing a project such as this is exactly the problem that I experienced- there is always going to be that one person in the group who cannot and does not understand the technological process associated with the creation of such a project. I do believe that given time and more opportunities to work with such a program will allow me to work through this project more efficiently. I think that another challenge is that it takes a long time- it took us (college students) the whole two hours to finish it so I cannot imagine how long it would take the elementary population to complete this project in a given time frame.
To make the process more efficient, the teacher should have all materials, such as the headset ready and all programs up and running. This would save so much time so that the students can get started on recording right away, instead of having to get up, grab a headset, find the program, wait for the program to load, etc. The teacher could also have a mini-instruction sheet printed out so that the students can refer back to it instead of clicking back and forth between the program and the instruction sheet document.
It seems as though a podcast is much like an oral presentation, with the use of technology involved. Students can give an oral presentation and can use music in the background to enhance their presentation. This would be just like doing a podcast without actually doing it.
