Contemporary Forms
The Podcast
A Podcast is a media file that can be played on a variety of portable media players or on a personal computer. The term “podcast” originates from a combination of the words “iPod” and “broadcast”.
Teachers could use a podcast to deliver pre-recorded content to students, just as radio stations could share recorded shows. In fact, anyone can become a “podcaster” and record content that could be of interest to others. Being able to access the audio file at any time makes this an interesting option for listeners.
The Blog
The term “blog” is short for “weblog”, which refers to a website that allows users to publish informal content in the form of dairy-style posts. The posts usually appear in reverse chronological order so the most recent content appears at the top of the website.
Blogs are published on a variety of topics from cooking to sports to politics and the content can be shared in the form of text, photo, video (video blogs or “vlogs”), music and even audio which would be called a “podcast”.
The Tweet
A Tweet is a short text sent through the social media platform “Twitter”. The message has a restrained number of characters which forces its users to send short, concise messages. The platform has become very popular amongst politicians and other well-known public figures as well as news outlets to share content to a large audience and spark a global conversation.