I found a podcast titled “Walt Mossberg’s Personal Technology” at the Wall Street Journal website http://online.wsj.com/public/page/podcast.html?mod=WSJ_footer .  This podcast discusses the latest gadgetry in consumer technology.  The most recent episode discussed mini cell phone towers that can be placed in one’s home to increase their cell phone coverage if they have poor reception in their homes.  As a business educator, I would personally be interested in listening to this blog so that I could perhaps find interesting new technologies to bring into my classroom.  I also was considering playing these podcasts for students in a marketing class and having them create sales projects or market research projects around these new technologies.

The educational podcast that I found for this assignment is titled  The Technology Teacher.  It can be found at http://www.podcastdirectory.com/podshows/4316869 .  This podcast was created by a technology teacher in California named Ron Kroetz.  I listened to episode 11 titled “Google for Educators”.  This podcast encouraged technology teachers to visit google.com/educators and mentioned several cool applications available from that site such as classroom posters, activity suggestions, along with links to helpful google products and how to use them in the classroom.  This podcast would be extremely helpful to me as an educator because it keeps up with new technologies and assists teachers with introducing these applications within their course of study.

Chapter four discusses the impact that technology is having on current school systems.  This chapter mentions the slow rate at which education changes and the lack of total and complete reformation incorporating technology into the full spectrum of education.  Despite the slow process to implement technology into the everyday experiences of students, there are several teachers and school systems who are making strides in classroom technology adaptation.  These teachers vary in their methods of adopting technology across several disciplines and as the impact of technology in schools grows, these instructors are sharing and communicating their ideas with one another in order to continue to learning new technology procedures.

I was really intrigued by the teachers who were incorporating pod casts and interviews into their teaching lessons.  I think that it is really important for students to gain perspective on the rapid rate with which things change and evolve throughout society.  As a business educator I would like to use pod casts to encourage my students to interview adults who were past the age of 65 and to discover some of the amazing changes that have taken place within their life span.  I would construct questions for the students to ask regarding technology, business practices, and other societal concerns which have dramatically changed within our country.  The students could use the information gathered from these interviews to create a research project.  Within the project the students would identify a unique characteristic from their interviews and discuss how this change has impacted business procedures since that time period. 

Pod casts and YouTube videos truly amaze me.  It is now possible for me to attempt to introductory skills in any subject matter my heart desires.  For example, I have always enjoyed making sushi but there is one type of roll that I never knew how to make.  So I simply searched for a video on YouTube and I found one instantly.  After watching the step by step training video and pausing it several times to take notes, I was able to successfully make the roll within the video that night for dinner.  I think businesses need to take advantage of the possibility of using YouTube and pod-casts as training tools.  These items are free and simple to use.  Training employees is a very expensive cost for businesses.  Especially those with a high turn over rate.  Frequently once the job applicant has completed the training they may being to search for another job and the money that was spent training that individual is forever lost once the employee leaves.  This is why I think that using these products for training or even a refresher course in safety training would be a great tool for thrifty businesses.