Podcasts are extremely suitable for education. I have said it before, I am not the only one to say it, but just as with other podcasts: you have to know where to find them. Especially those institutions that put out their lectures as podcasts, apparently do that for their own students only and therefore invest no effort in making it known to the wider public that they are there. It is hard to find them on the internet, in podcast directories and other places where you might look. If you are interested to know what podcasts are offered by the various educational institutions in the world, you will have to look them up one by one or go through unfiltered directories and so on.
A case to bring this problem home is my History 5 podcast. I am on the look out for History Podcasts all the time. I have already discovered this series from UC Berkeley and figured it is delivered twice a year. I even came into contact with the professor who delivered it in 2006, but the 2007 series still eluded me until yesterday. Not for lack of searches, mind you. I queried the professor, I queried the iTunes directory (which so far got my marks for being the best source for searching podcasts) with no result.
Yesterday I stumbled into it and this was while discovering one old and one new place on the web that delivers some inventory of educational podcasts:
I am off to learn History 5 again. This year, not with Thomas Laqueur, but with Margaret Lavinia Anderson. I have listened to the introductory lecture. Very different style from professor Laqueur, but I am sure I'll get used to it and I am eager in anticipation for getting the history of Europe 1450-2000 in a new style, per chance, from a new perspective, in any case with new insights.
