Another essential accessory for occasional teachers

An MP3 player with a collection of appropriate music and podcasts can be a great tool in the classroom, whether it's curriculum-related podcasts used to enrich a lesson, or The Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter soundtrack adding a calming ambience to the classroom.

The trick, though, is having a speaker system that allows the class to hear the MP3 player.  Unfortunately, speakers aren't very common equipment in classrooms yet (in fact, most classroom computers are equipped with headphones), so a prepared occasional teacher needs to bring their own speakers.

I've been looking for a suitably loud, yet portable speaker for a couple years now.  Most speakers aren't portable enough, or are too small and produce a tinny sound that can't be heard in a classroom.  I finally found one that works, though, in the Headrush Crimson Red Pocket Speaker.  I even picked it up on sale for $9.99.  It's slim, loud enough to fill a room, plugs into the headphone jack of my iPod, and it's even got a fold-out stand so it can be stood up.

Podcast Directories, Aggregators, and iTunes alternatives

In exploring the whole iTunes and podcast topic this week in more detail than I've ever bothered to do before (just about every waking moment the past few days!), I'm amazed at how much material is out there. I imagine that podcasts will become another source of information overload for me...

Regarding the information overload, I've been looking at various ways to manage podcasts. iTunes is great with it's iTunes Store podcast directory, but it doesn't sync with my Creative Labs Zen Touch MP3 player (or any non-Apple player as far as I know). I can subscribe to podcasts using Google Reader, which gives me the convenience of listening to them easily from any computer connected to the net, but it doesn't sync with MP3 players.

The solution I've found which I think is going to work best is by using PodNova.com, which is an online podcast aggregator. PodNova offers the best of both worlds. I can subscribe to podcasts, which I can find by searching their podcast directory. I can listen to podcasts online from any computer connected to the net. Best of all, I can also download their desktop client software which will automatically download the latest episodes of podcasts and sync with my MP3 player.

For finding podcasts, I've discovered a number of podcast directories online:

gpodder.org
www.podnova.com
zencast.com
www.podcastdirectory.com
www.podcastalley.com
www.podfeed.net
www.podcastshuffle.com
www.digitalpodcast.com
odeo.com

I've also been playing around with a variety of media players, since iTunes doesn't play well with non-iPods. Windows Media Player isn't bad just as a music player, but it lacks most of the bells and whistles other players offer. I of course have Creative MediaSource installed, as it offers the best sync options for my MP3 player, but for a desktop music player, the one I like best is called Songbird.

Songbird uses the Firefox web browser's underlying architecture as a programming platform, and is thus very web integrated, with a variety of add-ons available. It's easily configurable to access my music library (all my songs are stored in c:\mp3, podcasts go to c:\mp3\podcasts), and has all the features I can hope for. Of course, for watching movies, I use VLC Media Player.

Here's a few media players I was playing with:

Songbird
aTunes
foobar2000