This week there’s been some class discussion on the issue of information overload. Several of us, if not all of us, are having difficulty keeping up with all the eletronic journals, discussion board posts, course wiki and blog, readings, etc, etc. I found it interesting that in response to student’s concerns our instructor simply posted a podcast offering her comments on the issue. When we just can’t take more written information, sometimes it just best to say what we want to communicate. It’s been a while since I took Sensation and Perception in my psychology undergrad, but I wonder if it take less “brain power” to hear something and understand it than to read something and understand it.
It’s funny that no matter how much technology we come up with, sometimes we just want to hear someone’s voice. But who wants to talk to the phone? Geez, that’s so instrusive. 
Creating a podcast is a great way to communicate something via voice. Basically, podcasts are audio recordings. According to Wikipedia, a podcast is a series of digital computer files, usually either digital audio or video, that is released periodically and made available for download by means of web syndication. Although this definition states a podcast is a series of files, I’ve seen single files described as podcasts, which is what our instructor posted. Anyway, podcasts are simple and good if you want to broadcast a message without a dynamic discussion. A free audio recording software I like is Audacity.
Well, I hope I didn’t add to the information overload…whoopsy.