technology

Blogs, Podcasting, Wikis, and other things Web 2.0

Podcasts in USA

Last week I read an article about Grammar Girl and had been thinking about podcasts for various reasons all week. Today, I was reading yesterday's USA Today article on podcasting and also noticed it mention Eric's Speaking of History blog. You might remember I first met Eric at NCSS and we've arranged to take our teachers to meet him in his classroom this summer. He's really inspiration and anytime you get the chance to meet him at a conference, it's very worth your time to so - his enthusiasm is contagious.

Eric's blog is a great way to share his enthusiasm for history, technology, and teaching. Blogging and podcasting allows teachers opportunities to collaborate and interact that just haven't existed before even though they do among administrators and those working in business.

Grammar Girl is a way to learn something we all need to know in small, digestable chunks. I can see this appealing to those who didn't know they would need to know these things the first time or few times they studied it. Or, for those who appreciate the knowledge later in life either because of work or "just because," she offers an easy way to access important information.

Gerald Zahavi of the University of Albany visited Michigan State this week. He's been doing aural (which includes oral history, music, the spoken word) history for decades now and it is a great way not only to engage students (and the general public) in history but to develop historical thinking skills. And, developing aural and video projects is an activity that students will remember forever in addition to adding to our larger historical knowledge base. His program, Talking History, includes new interviews and historical pieces of the spoken word encased with historical context.

As I was processing all this information and insight this week, I was thinking that ten years ago, we would have laughed at someone who asserted that people would be more interested in what they were listening to than the video sources they could watch. In our area, we are so used to driving and it is normally safer to listen to information or entertainment than to watch it. I've thought of podcasts as a way to allow students to listen to course-related information during their commutes or at their convenience rather than having to read a piece of paper. Podcasting also allows you to talk students through a particular exercise that might not always translate in print. Furthermore, the technology makes it easy to offer both audio and video podcasts with the same focus. The key is finding compelling video and/or images that are actually worth using and aren't just "pictures". Dr. Zahavi, for example, had a good PPT template basically divided into 4 parts with the video of the person speaking in the bottom right hand corner along with pictures, including newspaper clippings, in the other 3 sections.

We've tried to do some oral history projects with teachers but it's difficult for students to follow up without classtime specifically dedicated to it. Plus, delays in shipment of recorders also created a major hurdle given that, at least on one case, they came in as school ended instead of time for the last 3 weeks in which the project was outlined. Those are just part of the normal glitches of the technology.

One of the key points in considering any use of technology in teaching is to begin with using yourself to enhance your teaching and then think of ways to integrate it with students and then, the third step, is it possible logistically and otherwise to get students to utilize the technology and/or should they utilize it in the same ways?

March 17, 2007 in podcasting | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Digital Humanities Podcast

Here's a recently announced podcast from the folks at CHNM.  I'm curious how popular the longer format (this one is 40 minutes) will be.

March 11, 2007 in podcasting | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Historian is a Podcast Star

This article from the New York Times discusses a great application of podcasting to teach ancient history.

February 07, 2007 in podcasting | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Greenbush Podcast Director

Although not all of these were produced by our history groups, you can find our History podcasts by clicking here.

November 13, 2006 in podcasting | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Podcasting Workshop on June 16

I'll be teaching a podcasting workshop at Greenbush on Friday, June 16. One of our grant teachers has agreed to assist in working one-on-one with teachers. Here is more information:

Download podflyer.doc

May 29, 2006 in podcasting | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Podcasting College Lectures

The site is too busy to add a comment right now but it's worth considering another option - "adding value" rather than jumping directly to podcasting the entire lecture. I agree that it is the author's (professor's) IP. Another approach is that they are expected to listen to the lecture and class is primarily follow-up discussion by STUDENTS demonstrating that they have learned the material. Moving students from passive to active, however, is still problematic for more than a few students. Read the entire post here.

May 09, 2006 in podcasting | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Berkeley iTunes

This week's Chronicle has an article on Berkeley's podcasts via its iTunes site. Stanford also has them but limits most recordings to enrolled students. Interesting marketing by Berkeley and making reliable info available on the net all at the same time.

May 02, 2006 in podcasting | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

the iPod cometh

Courtesy of our grant, I am now the proud owner of one of these.  They also purchased a PDA for us to compare it to - I'm a bit surprised since I mentioned the Pocket PCs with the Windows OS instead of the Palm OS. But since I bought one of those for myself last Christmas, I will be busy comparing all three . . . .

March 28, 2006 in podcasting | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

podcasting in Liberty

Saw an article in the Kansas City Star about this teacher podcasting for his students in Liberty, Missouri.

March 22, 2006 in podcasting | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Duke iPod report

Duke University has reported on the effectiveness of its iPod pilot project here.

March 18, 2006 in podcasting | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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