Practical Principals

Practical Principles Website


I listened to the Practical Principals podcast between Scott Elias and Melinda Miller. Scott and Melinda have never actually met, they don’t even live in the same state, but they have created several podcasts together. Both are administrators in schools in the U.S. Scott has been selected as an Apple Distinguished Educator. He attended an Apple Distinguished Educators conference this past summer, where they were exposed to all types of new technology that are currently been tested. Scott felt the collaboration at the conference was the best part of being selected for the honor. Scott said “The ability to ask a dumb question on twitter and get five responses from brilliant people along with the power of connecting and networking that bring other strengths to the table were the best part of the conference.”

Podcasts offer personal development training at the touch of your fingertips. No more traveling to faraway places to hear a speaker that has expertise in your area. For Educators, this can save time and money for school systems. Maybe your system can’t afford to send you to another state, pay for a hotel, food, and expenses for you to learn about new curriculum, but podcasting and vodcasting can offer some real relief in this situation. It also can alleviate scheduling conflicts. If you missed a conference because you had a conflict in your schedule, you may not have to wait a long period of time for the conference to return to your area.

In preparing for our podcast, I think we need to keep in mind our target listeners. We want our podcast to contain information that others can use for future needs. Scott and Melinda’s podcast kept referring to dates of conferences around the nation that were taking place. They also included information about where you could download conference information and listen to keynote speakers addresses. This allows you to pick and choose bits and pieces of conferences that you may be interested in. I think that we need be mindful of not packing too much broad information into a podcast. I think that podcast format should be fairly specific to a certain topic. There is no reason to try and cram too much broad information in one podcast. If the podcast is too broad, I think you run the risk of losing a listeners attention. If you feel the information warrants, it would be better to create multiple podcasts to keep the podcast on topic. Overall, I thought the information in Practical Principals was very useful.