podcasts

for our techno teach-in i choose the topic of podcasts. i didn't know too much about them and wanted to explore more. also, it seemed to be a more interesting topic than some of the others offered :) i use itunes quite often but was still not quite familiar with the podcasts offered in the itunes store. jess showed me how she browses the store. i didn't realize you could download so much free music. good to know. beyond music i really wanted to know what roll the podcats could take in the education field, especially art education. in our powerpoint presentation i posed some advantages and disadvantages the podcast could present in educational world as a young student, college student, and teacher. for the use of pocasts for students prek-12 i stated a few advantages:
-provides an engaging way to learn
-gives them an authentic platform for publishing, gathering information, etc
-record poetry, stories, etc
-creatively share work in the classroom
-portable
and disadvantages:
-possibly no face-to-face interaction
-lack of equipment (computers, voice recorder, software, bandwidth, etc)
-lack of knowledge by teacher
-finding appropriate podcasts for viewing can be time consuming

advantages for college students:
-wide-range of educational content available to download for research, etc
-class lectures available with in days
-mobility
-research tool
disadvantages for college students:
-poor attendance
-no audience participation

advantages for educators:
-allows teachers to create authentic audio and video material (curriculum, lesson plans, examples, lectures, websites, resources for other educators)
-include technology into their classroom
-easily available and inexpensive equipment, portable
-parent and community involvement
-tutorials, lesson plans, activities available as teaching resources

for each group we asked the class what other advantages and disadvantages could surface when using podcasts in teaching environments. i was hoping for more input and discussion from our class. possibly i did not present much excitement in the topic? did we not define the term podcost appropriately making it easier to discuss? did they fear their ideas were non-relevant to the topic? or was everyone just tired and ready to go home? all of the above? instead of being stared downed by blank faces we continued the presentation. in the future i hope not to do this. i did at this time possibly because these were classmates rather than my students. i want my students to engaged in dialogue. possibly this is a skill i need to work on... exciting a classroom to want to talk, even if it's a boring subject. students and fellow classmates.

jess and i decided to create our own podcast. we didn't just want to talk the talk but wanted to walk the walk as well. the process of creating a podcast wasn't as hard as i thought but it was more time consuming than i thought. since everyone seems to be extremely stressed by the beginning stages of our thesis as well as other classes and life in general, we decided to make a fun and entertaining podcast. apparently not. from the confused and blank faces afterwards we assumed folks were not impressed. maybe just tired? this was in no way to offend any of our piers but merely put a smile on our stressed faces. we hope people found humor in it. we then struggled to show exactly how we created the podcast. we should have had our laptop hooked rather than the class computer which had minimal resources on it to use for examples. we could have also had a step-by-step process written out to show/hand out to the class. hopefully the class can now have at least an interest to explore garage band and the use of podcasts.

here are some of the sites we mentioned in the presentation that contain educational podcasts:
Podcasting News
http://www.podcastingnews.com/
The Educational Podcast Network
http://epnweb.org/
Princeton Online:Art Education Blogs and Podcasts
http://www.princetonol.com/groups/iad/links/blogs.html

here are instructions on how to get to saic podcasts on itunes:
Go to www.saic.edu not the portal
Click on Wired at bottom of page
Open with your iTunes
Log in using your usual name and password
Explore lectures, Visiting Artist Series, tutorials and more