The last piece of my online identity revamp has been to explore doing a podcast. Yeah, I know, very late to the game. In 2056 I’ll start my TikTok channel. The truth is, I played a bit with them in the first flush of enthusiasm in the 00s, but they never really took for me. I think we all have the social media form that best suits our preferences or talents. Long form blogging is my thing. Audio wasn’t it for me, mainly because I have a fantastically boring voice. I remember doing media training once and after doing a pretend interview in which I felt I had responded like Nicolas Cage on an especially manic day, the trainer smiled sympathetically, saying “could you try being more varied and enthusiastic?” Also, I am not good at reading a script (as Clint will attest after editing my audiobook readings for 25 Years of Ed Tech). That 25 Years of Ed Tech series that arose from Clint’s audiobook project and Laura Pasquini organising a podcast which was, in many ways, more interesting than the book, rekindled my interest though, as did the always fabulous Terry Greene’s Gettin’ Air podcast. And over the years I have become more accustomed to doing keynotes and just rambling about a subject. I was prompted to take the plunge finally by Maren exploring podcasting for her Virtual Teams book, so I just pinched all her hard won knowledge on getting started. I have gone for the easy option, using Spotify’s Anchor. I realise this is mildly evil, but have sacrificed morality for ease of use. Sorry. I will say though, that Anchor is very easy to use, if a bit unsophisticated. You can register it in other podcast sites, so you don’t have to listen through Spotify. What has allowed me to get started is to use the book Metaphors of Ed Tech as the basis. I generally take a metaphor from the book and speak around it for 5-10 minutes, then combine with another one to make an episode. As I blog about metaphors in ed tech quite a bit anyway, I figure there will be some mileage beyond the book also. I’m not sure if it’ll be a long term thing, and of course, once I get offered the big bucks for adverts you can expect Proctorio endorsements in every episode, but it has been fun. It’s worth having a play with a format you don’t know well every now and then to see if it is a better fit this time around. Anyway, if you fancy a listen, head on over to the Podcast page.