Bells & Whistles

Reflections on Learning

I can think of a number of things that I own or use where it seems that I only scratch the surface of their potential. Many of these things are in the realm of electronics or technology. For instance, I know that my PVR (which by the way may have been the greatest invention of the past decade) can recognize my favourite shows and record them for me whenever a new one comes on. I know that my Blackberry can be used as a GPS device and that there are a multitude of “shortcuts” that I have yet to use. I know that the smartboards in our classrooms can be used to take attendance and do our announcements. All of these functions, all of these bells and whistles are things I have yet to explore. Perhaps it’s because of time, perhaps because I’ve tried it once and have forgotten the concept.

The Internet in general and Web 2.0 more specifically are like this for me as well. There seems to me, to be an entire world of add-ons and features that exist out there that I know very little about. In one way this is exciting because there is so much to learn. In another way, it’s intimidating and at times a barrier to entry. Why even try because I’ll never be able to figure it all out?

For me, podcasting is one of these things that I’ve heard lots about, but, for a variety of reasons, have never used it very often. My goal, in this section of the course then, was to learn as much as I could about podcasting and see if it was a tool that I could integrate more into my online existence.

The Personal Level
One of the strangest things that has happened to me as a personal user/learner on the Internet is that more and more of what I do is text based. As a kid I would watch all the sports highlight shows, now I’d rather read about it. If I visit a sports news site or a blog and there is an opportunity to click on video or listen to an interview or podcast, 99 times out of 100, I’m only going to read the text.

With this in mind, I’ve spent the past couple of weeks clicking those links I wouldn’t normally click. Listening and viewing things, I normally would not have listened to or viewed. My conclusion, based on this really simple sample, is that I’m not sold on it. I think this has more to do with my own personal learning style. I owned a walkman once back in the day, I’ve tried to listen to books on tape, my wife has an iPod, but I’ve never used it, I run 30 or 40 km a week and never listen to music.

On the personal level, I’ve actually find myself migrating away from websites that have moved more content from text to audio or video files. I think there are some reasons for this and I’ll explore these more in the final reflection portion. My research this past week thought does indicate that I am probably a dying breed. One that will have to face the reality that more and more content is going to be presented in this way and that I will have to adapt my ways to keep up.

The Professional Level
Will Richardson’s section on podcasts is on the surface another example of this overwhelming barrier to entry. His book is filled with suggestions of radio stations to re-enactments that can help bring the classroom to life. Many teachers however, know very little about using their email properly let alone start manipulating MP3 files in Audacity.

This combined with an ever-expanding curriculum that many of us struggle to complete each year, makes the time constraints of the learning curve even more daunting. I think ultimately, it is this barrier, TIME, that is the number one factor in making people slow or non-adopters of new technologies. It probably also speaks to my apprehension (or maybe it’s laziness) in investing a pile of time in creating a podcast, when I could write it down or explain it in person a lot easier?

At some point though, I have to challenge my own bias. The easiest way for me to do this is to break it down into more easily manageable entry points. I’ll refer to these in each of the following sections.

Teachers
Just to show that I’m not just some teacher opposed to change, in the early 2000’s my grade 5 class scripted, acted, filmed, edited, produced and published online 6 videos of Jacques Cartier’s arrival in Canada. One group, chosen by the class, acted and filmed the raw footage. We then partnered with a nearby high school CTS lab where 6 groups of students each manipulated the raw footage into their own 3 to 5 minute “commercial." Each commercial was to be based upon the Canadian history vignettes on Histori.ca and on television. The end result was outstanding (I have them on DVD somewhere and will try to upload one to my blog). The flip side of this was the time commitment. We spent weeks (if not more) on this and while I can justify all of it as being linked to the curriculum, I did feel that I was crunched for time in other areas.

The key to success of ideas like podcasting will be in how we can integrate into the other things we are doing and how we can use it to enhance children’s learning. Todd Diakow is Technology Lead teacher in the Lethbridge area and he offers a presentation on “Do I Have to Write Another Essay?” This speaks to the notion that many students learn in different ways and that podcasting might be a way to allow students who are more verbal an opportunity to better express themselves.

A final driver of this for teachers will be how they are able to incorporate this into a routine. Doing a podcast for the sake of doing a podcast is not something that works at my school. There needs to be a meaning behind it and a reason for existence. There also needs to be an opportunity to try something more than once to better learn the tool and to improve on previous work.

Librarian/Administrator
One of the real benefits of this course for me has been the ability to find ides that I can incorporate into our schools library. I “stole” the idea of the video book review from another librarian when we did the video-casting segment. This week, I really enjoyed listening to the students in the “Good Master’s! Sweet Ladies! readings. I definitely want to do something like this to promote reading with our students.

I’ve toyed too, with the idea of doing our morning announcements through our school’s website. Teachers could turn on their smartboards, click a link that plays the national anthem and listen to any announcements for the morning. If anything this will be a fun project, however, I wonder about it’s longevity? Theory is one thing, getting people to hand in announcements on time to produce a podcast is another!


Students
As always, the biggest implications here are for students. Ultimately, the success of these and similar tools is going to rest on the ability of schools to build on prior learning. A grade seven teacher is going to have an easier time integrating podcasts in the classroom if students come to it with experience. If teachers feel that they are constantly re-teaching they will likely avoid the idea all together.

A second consideration is the technology itself. In clicking through many of the links of the Education Podcast Network I saw a lot of material dated from 2006, 2007 and 2008. I was left wondering if podcasting had suffered a bit from the fad effect. It became popular for quite some time, but people have moved on to other tools. I don’t necessarily have anything quantifiable to back this up, but just a pattern I noted.

Reliability is another concern here. I was unable to listen to many of the podcasts I came across. Sometimes these were software glitches, sometimes links had expired. One the trailfire websites for instance (EdTechTalk) never did work for me. We’ve all been to those PD sessions where the technology failed and we were left frustrated and the presented was left flustered. I am nervous about that with our students because it seems that as we move into some of these tools, the potential for glitches is magnified.

New Knowledge

My tone this week has obviously been a bit negative with regard to podcasts. While I do want to explore this more, I still have some concerns about the cost/benefits in terms of time.

Having said that, I know that I have knowledge this week that I did not have before, so clearly there must be value in this. If you check out the link www.techteacher.ca you can find some very good links to screencasts which are pretty much the same as a podcast. In the most recent one, Shaun LeBleu does a great job of showing teachers how students can “sign in” using the smartboard. A unique touch, done in about 10 mintues. Clearly he put some work into putting this together and those watching received some real benefit. But is everyone willing to do the same?

For me, I obviously need to spend more time playing with this tool to either better understand it and refute my bias or secondly to be able to provide an educated perspective on what I perceive to be the limitations of podcasting.

References

Richardson, W. (2009). Blogs, wikis, podcasts and other powerful web tools for classrooms (2nd ed., p. 90). Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin Press.

http://www.purposefuldesign.com/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=ZVpNbI5x8Us%3D&tabid=599

http://www.commoncraft.com/podcasting

http://medinger.wordpress.com/2008/03/05/in-the-classroom-kid-podcasts-of-good-masters-sweet-ladies/

http://www.epnweb.org/

www.techteacher.ca

Without info from:
http://www.edtechtalk.com/node/3059