ET Phone Home Blog #5 Podcast

ET Phone Home


The grade is gradual, maybe 10 degrees, my legs feel good, but it is already 25 degrees, only 7:00 am and I started out with a single bottle of water. Testing the Kettle Valley Railroad (KVR) portion of the Trans Canada Trail is my running goal today. This trail is 50 feet from the front door of my friend’s B&B, and I am up before the household had awakened. The run is to uncoil my tightened dendrites from last night’s 2:30 am podcast creation that hadn’t loaded, even though I let it spin all night on the laptop.

As I run, my legs keep track of the grey-dust and rock-laden kilometers while my mind starts to travel ahead along mental trails of possibilities…


Podcasts…what did I already know, what did I need to know, what could I touch and go on and what could I discard. I am preparing myself to return to the computer to start the researching phase of this post and need to re-ground to these basic steps of new learning. As I round a pine-lined curve of the mountain, the question, “why podcast?” is tumbling in my mind. As I look up from the rocky trail, I catch my breath and slow my pace. Way far ahead, trundling towards me is one, no maybe two gray or tawny coloured creatures, traveling my trail towards me. As they see me, they too stop- to test my scent, to test my speed, to test my species. The assessment is fast and as they spin around, I strain to see a bushy tail? Maybe long legs? Coyote, wolf, deer, so hard to tell.

I run alone; I run without a phone or a whistle or a watch. I naively consider all God’s creatures my friends. In my mind I see these creatures as friendly deer perhaps out on the trail for a morning cherry picking. Lovely. How nice to have company on the trail. Sprinting ahead to catch a better look, I see a suggestion of a living form, wait… a tan log? A brown rock? Hard to say and now they are long gone.

Yet the feeling of reassurance, of comfort, of total lack of fear propels me to keep running and running. I am not alone.




And then it struck me; the “why” of why podcast. The need to speak, the need to be heard, draws deeply from that most fundamental of human needs- that created desire to know and be known. We want contact. We want to know if there is someone out there to hear our voice. We need to know we are not alone.

Perhaps in some small way, the podcast addresses this need, this creative urge to know and be known. We create a voice, we send it out, and maybe that is enough. We exist because we have a voice. If there is a response then that is more affirmation, but the voice may be enough.

My Journey with Podcasting

My research for this post seems to have found the tentative tracings of a path and for that I am grateful. My feet find the grooves if I stick to this plan:

• Start with a great big fat ‘ole Google search and get a feel for the terminology and the general user landscape.
• Search any classmates’ thoughts, if any, about preferred applications.
• Check out the YouTube video on how to.

Now this is precisely where the plan goes astray…because I get inspired to just start doing it! In this burst of false energy, which is simply disguised adrenaline and too much coffee, I begin constructing a podcast. Before this research I thought a podcast was just an audio clip, but now I discover it can be video too!

Wow –who! I am fresh full of video, having just come off the lake from our wakeboarding lessons! Let’s see the Mac is a dream for making a little on the spot video, no that’s too simple, lets try adding my existing camera video to a new Mac video, and sound effects. What ???I have to learn iMovie?

Okay wow look at all these options. Let’s try this ohhhhhh sound effects, and take out this, opps lost that, let’s add music off of my iTunes files, and what if this and how about that…whoosh..there goes another chunk of my life.

After many false starts in posting and messing with Feedburner (looks like I didn’t need after all, thanks Mac), and some kind of “free” song download...what another subscription! But it’s another false start - they are asking too much from me. How do you unsubscribe from all these false start apps??

So for the upload I tried to follow the Blogger instructions in the help link. Looks easy enough but I got befuddled at “inserts the html code” when I couldn’t find any, and then I just start to cry. It was 2:00 am and I was so close to posting. I left the computer on all night and hoped by morning it would be magically uploaded to my blog.

Nope. The next morning there was no video loaded and the connection had timed out! Grrr..

So today I went back to what I know. Pull the video from my iPhoto library, put it on the desktop, go back to Blogger, click add video and after 15 minutes of uploading ...viola! Finally. I truly am a one trick (one app) pony! But that’s okay; I am not expected at Churchill Downs either.

So...back to research and implications

The potential for podcasting in education is huge. Robinson & Ritzko (2009) note that as iPods and MP3 players and more importantly, the iPhone continue to increase in popularity (and as prices fall), podcasting will only continue to grow and change the way educational information is accessed in an increasingly mobile, digital world.

A survey of the literature on podcasting in an educational context produced research that was by and large, very practical in nature. There were a few studies of “What we did”, but I quickly got a sense that this was such an emerging field that there just hasn’t been time yet for extensive research to be completed. There is however, a lot of “how to” information.

The podcast is the new transistor radio, according to Boria (2005).
The analogy holds in that the iPod and MP3 players have enabled the information to go with learners at their time and pace and locale. There are some unique elements to the podcast that position it to be very adaptable for a multitude of learning situations. Students can download specific topics that are created by their teachers or they can subscribe to a RSS feed through podcatching software (is it just me or does this have a creepy link to Invasion of the Body Snatchers?) and regularly podcasts are delivered to your “door”, like having the paper delivered to your house. Students can download to their computer and then transfer files to their iPod or phones.

Boria (2005) sought out schools that were using iPod technology and discovered educators using podcasting for enhancing students' vocabulary, writing, editing, public speaking, and presentation skills. While the majority of courses using podcasting tend to be for foreign language learning, music, and the humanities, it’s the students themselves who are creating applications for podcasts as a way of demonstrating their learning. This suggests that the pull towards increased usage may come from the students’, rather than the teachers’ side.

Joivitt (2008) piloted a project using podcasting for students' library orientations. The results were very favorable with clients citing convenience, high interest, practicality in providing learner-directed guides and a good listening resource for improving English language skills. Some cautions however emerged which included the importance of having very good clear readers doing the podcasts, having consistent volume (Garageband now fixes that!), and not all users knew how to use the technology. For dial-up Internet users downloading was too slow and frustrating. Library personnel also learned to write scripts before podcasting and to keep them short. Some clients liked music in the podcasts while others really didn’t.

While the result was positive, it is important to research what works and what doesn’t or even to get feedback from your particular audience if you are planning on using podcasting in the classroom or for professional development.


In my own Outreach education context, the parenting students could be served by having access to a podcast library from which they could choose information for example, that would be relevant to their individual stage of pregnancy or parenting. Check out the Breastfeeding podcast! They could access this in any locale as many students do not easily get to our school, and they would not feel embarrassed about the topics they are selecting. i.e.: She took a brochure on STI’s!!!

My social studies students would also access an infinite supply of primary source materials from which they could prepare a response or review a lesson. For example, hearing rather than reading Martin Luther King deliver his I Have a Dream speech is a powerful lesson in passion and authenticity.



Students in all humanities classes could also create rich media presentations on topics they are exploring and embed their own comments or their classmates’ while producing or planning their work.

Students who are strong auditory learners would find that podcasts, rather than textbooks better suit their learning modality. Also the ability to listen to material while driving to school, for example, would be a boost to students who work full time while carrying heavy courses loads.

Podcasts could also be used for teachers to create news updates for parents and the larger school community. In our non-attendance based Outreach setting, podcasts would enable students to remain connected to their teachers, a valuable motivator particularly in the current on-line learning interface. The biggest complaint our students have with on-line courses is the lack of teacher contact.

The applications for the classroom are endless, as are PD opportunities for teachers: Is there a conflict for your favorite speaker’s schedules at the specialist council? Listen to it on the drive home from Kananaskis after the conference. Teachers could also post podcasts on a topic such as highlighting resources when new curriculum is being implemented.

Boria (2005) however, noted that for many non-tech teachers, the ease of using podcasting is not effortless.

Explaining this resistance, Campbell (2005) notes

Perhaps few of us will have the time, energy, or motivation to add an entirely new skill set to our working lives. Most of us, however, can and should learn the potential uses and value of rich media authoring—in this case, the podcast. Once we have, we can certainly partner with the IT and AV specialists at our institutions, specialists who will do the technical work to bring our teaching and learning designs to life in the classroom and on the Web.

For those of you with IT access as Campbell is describing, this takes the pressure off, but for the rest of us in the public schools, for example, my solution is to get yourself a Mac!

But it is imperative, according to Campbell that as students gain more fluency in their technologies, (note that when he wrote this the iPhone wasn’t even out yet), it is imperative that educators learn the rudiments:

At the same time, our own professional lives will increasingly involve rich media authoring. As the Infoworld writer (and prolific blogger) Jon Udell points out, there was a time when professors did not do their own typing or line editing. Now, however, moderate skill in typing and word-processing is simply assumed. Those of us who compose at the keyboard probably prefer to do our own typing; indeed, in most cases, the line between typing and composing has grown so faint as to be practically invisible. The same process will inevitably overtake rich media authoring as well.

This has already happening in the example of the Pod coup of the radio. I did not know that as conglomerate radio becomes boring, formulaic and obsolete, the listener-generated iPod radio station is rising. Campbell (2005) cautions:

But the collapse of radio is only part of the story of the rise of podcasting. The endurance of radio, or the idea of radio, is the other part and is a major reason why podcasting has such potential value in teaching and learning. There is magic in the human voice, the magic of shared awareness. Consciousness is most persuasively and intimately communicated via voice.

So here we return to my piney fragrant forest, the powdery trail, with the wolf-scat markers. It is now 9:00am, and my water is long gone. I have come way, way too far up the trail and now I have to go way, way too far back down- except the temperature is now pushing 30 degrees and the rock wall on my right shoulder is tasering the heat back to me. The diamond-tipped waves of Lake Okanagan mock my beet-red, sweaty face with their cool cerulean blue. But they are out of reach, 600 feet below me.


Yet I am reminded of those two tawny figures, undefined, yet sharing the same space, the same air as me. I am not alone; I can do this, hard thing.


They are watching me, maybe even rooting for me.... yet it is a fantastical construction I muse, remembering the cougar alert in the newspaper last night. But I feel no malice and the lurking of those who would do me harm is another posting.

For now it is enough to know that it is indeed the spirit or breath that makes us alive, and that breath gives us our voices. “Pneuma” in Greek is translated as both Spirit and wind in John 3:8; it is defined as a movement of air (a gentle blast) of the wind or breath of nostrils or mouth.

The wild creatures and I breathe the same air, feel the same wind and share the same spirit of this encounter. Knowing they are there on the trail with me, that we are somehow connected, comforts me.

Is it this desire to be connected that prompts people to broadcast their breath, their pneuma, their spirit? Is this the consciousness that is revealed in the human voice of the podcast that Campbell is referring to? Is this what I am now doing in this post?

In a world that is ever sub-dividing into tribes, could this desire to be heard be the connector that brings people’s spirits and ideas together? Is this not the goal of an educated, enlightened civilization?
















References

Borja, R. (2005). Podcasting craze comes to K-12 schools. Education Week, 25(14), 8. Retrieved July 17, 2009, from ProQuest Education Journals. (Document ID: 942931811).

Campbell, G. (2005). There's something in the air: Podcasting in education. Educause Review, November/December, 32-47. Retrieved July 17, 2009, from ProQuest Education Journals. (Document ID: 1460558491).

Gatewood, K. (2008). Podcasting: Just the basics. Kappa Delta Pi Record, 44(2), 90-93. Retrieved July 17, 2009, from ProQuest Education Journals. (Document ID: 1404441791).

Jowitt, A. (2008). Creating communities with pod casting. Computers in libraries, 28(4), 14-15,54-56. Retrieved July 17, 2009, from ProQuest Education Journals. (Document ID: 1460558491).

Robinson, S. & Ritzko, J. (2009). Podcasts in education: What, why and how? Allied Academies International Conference. Academy of Educational Leadership. Proceedings, 14(1), 38-43. Retrieved July 17, 2009, from ABI/INFORM Global. (Document ID: 1769776311).