Casting

I work in a Windows world, but at home I am a very loyal Mac user. I was watching the MacWorld keynote address given by Steve Jobs. I was amazed at all the casting going on; podcasting, photocasting, videocasting. Using the software that comes on a Mac you are ready to create. You can use Garage Band to record a podcast and drag photos from iPhoto to accompany the podcast. You can work in iMovie to make a videocast and in iPhoto to create a photocast. Using iWeb, the newest member of the iLife suite, you can create a website to display all your casts. Your iWeb project can then be hosted on your .Mac account. You can blog, post casts and allow people to subscribe to your casts. It seems like you can create an almost instant website. I have ordered iLife 6 and will soon try it out, I'll see how easy it really is. I do have some questions though. Can you take the website you created in iWeb and use it with another host, other then .Mac? Can the casts created in Garage Band, iMovie and iPhoto be easily posted to websites outside the .Mac world?

As an educator I need to look at how casting in general can influence the learning experience. Can it be used to support certain types of learners? I see so many possibilities, where to begin? My district has been struggling with how to reach a particular group of students. We have students who return to their country of origin for a month or two each winter. In MA this means they are absent and this affects our districts annual yearly progress, also their absent prevents the students from achieving the state standards. Is there a way we can continue to offer instruction while they are away? The internet offers many possibilities, could we use Moodle to create a rich learning experience for these students? Can we make podcasts and videocasts to keep them connected to their schools? This leads to so many other questions. Do they have access to computers and the internet in their home country? Who will create these courses, who will maintain them? What type of content do you include? Any good instruction requires good planning, implementing new technology requires even more.