I am impressed with the amount of on-line communication resources that we are becoming familiar with.  Now we have seen the positive effects of writing in our blogs in order to share ideas and receive feedback.  This has been a very helpful tool that I have used to validate or question the ideas that I have put forth.  In addition to this, we now have the ability to present podcasts.  This is a very helpful tool that we can use to share ideas that are more "alive" than text.  By this I mean that you can hear the voice on see the inflection that is present when the teacher is explaining their ideas.  

This will come in handy for all teachers.  However, i find it especially helpful for foreign language teachers looking to explain grammatical rules and new vocabulary.  I believe this because of the strong importance of inflection and pronunciation when teaching a second language.  Through this means we can teach the rules of pronunciation in a much more tangible way.  We can be very explicit in our pronunciation strategies concerning, for example, the rolling of the Spanish "r" or "rr" which can be explained by putting the tongue against the roof of your mouth and pushing air over it in order for it to vibrate.  By using an audio sample one can make the sounds and show the specific sounds that are involved in the phonetic process.

There are many advantages to the usage of the podcasts.  I think that we will figure out more and more ways in which we can utilize them to the fullest as we experiment with them.  We will also see great ideas coming from others as we comment on and listen to the podcasts.  I'm excited to learn and to teach!