First Podcast I’ve listened to in a Long Time

I know!  It’s a terrible thing for a tech guy to say — though this revalation is fairly consistent with the frequency of my own podcast, Connect Learning — and I’ll not look back to see when my last one was posted.  It’s depressing.

Having shoot the visiting alien (played by Michael Rennie), the “military people” look up in astonishment at what just walked out of the flying saucer.  “Gort!  Klaatu barata nikto.”  From The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951).

But I’m still running the Education Podcast Network site and get to see what’s coming through — so that I can toss out the less appropriate.  This morning, I ran across MySF Project Blog, a blog/podcast about teaching Science Fiction in secondary school.  The host is Michael Sisley, a secondary teacher in Deakin, in the Australian Capital Territory, and creator of an online course on speculative fiction.

Using a thematic approach and research based around online and flexible learning instructional design, the mySF Project discusses texts that may be useful to teachers and students of SF in middle and upper secondary school. Deriving from several years teaching SF with students in Canberra, Australia and elsewhere, as well as recent studies, the mySF Project comes out on this website from the darkness of education intranets and is presented as another resource for secondary English and other teachers, as well as inviting feedback on the materials as part of an ongoing educational dialogue with teachers, authors, film-makers, blog and podcast creators, and students.

I’ve probably mentioned in this blog, but frequently express in outside conversations, that I believe that science fiction should become a much more widely explored genre in our students learning of literature.  This is not to say that the classics have less to teach us about our own world.  But perhaps, in this time of rapid change, good SciFi writers might be especially valuable sources of ideas for our students.  We can’t ignore these stats from Conor Bendl (Episode 26),

19 of the top 20 grossing movies of all time — science fiction or fantasy.  They did a poll a couple of years ago, Australia’s favorite book, Austrialia’s favorite film, and Lord of the Rings topped it in both situations. (( Bendl, Conor. “mySF Project: Podcast 26, for Teachers of Secondary Students Studying Science Fiction (SF).” [Podcast Entry] mySF Project Blog. 29 Jun 2009: 26 Podcast.31 Jul 2009. <http://www.pataphysics.net.au/mysf_project/mysf_project_blog/?p=30>. ))

I listened to Sisley’s latest podcast, number 27, which features an interview with Thea van O, a former English teacher, SciFi buff, and currently a coordinator of learning technologies.  She talks about instruction technologies and the teaching of science fiction.  I learned about two tools that were completely new to me.

The first was Kahootz, which appears to be a virtual worlds generator (purchased software) that students in Australia are using to create 3D walk-throughs, which can be exported as AVI files. I got the correct spelling and URL from Helen Otway, an Assistant Principal/ICT person from Melbourne — via Twitter.  According to Heather Bailie, a secondary school ICT coach and teacher librarian, also from Melbourne,

Kahootz is a software app to create animated worlds. My 10 year old says it’s really fun! Vic. ed. dept have site licence. (( Bailie, Heather. “Twitter.” [Weblog Hbailie] 31 Jul 2009 07:08. Web.31 Jul 2009. ))

Created using Dumpr

As is often the case, when you ask a question in Twitter, you always learn more than you asked for.  Stuhasic (Twitter handle) mentioned Skoolaborate, an online project that brings students together from across the globe, using blogs, wikis, and Second Life.  Here is a video and explanation.

The other new tool I learned about was Dumpr, a cloud-based graphic tool that does some interesting things with digital images, probably most appropriate for elementary children, though I got a kick out of making the image to the right, using Photo to Sketch.

Conor Bendl is interviewed in episode 26, a high school teacher, instructor of an elective course (Speculative Fiction), and SciFi author. Most of the conversation explored Conors activities and techniques as an author.  It’s one of the huge benefits of a more openly communicative world that we have access, from the classroom, to real authors, who are often eager to talk about their craft.

Anyway, it was a good way to start a day of mostly programming.

So if you agree, that SciFi should be more widely used in classrooms, who would you recommend?  I’ll start with some obvious one.  Arther C. Clark, Greg Bear, and I am especially fond of Robert Sawyer’s work.  Who would you add?

Powered by ScribeFire.

3 thoughts on “First Podcast I’ve listened to in a Long Time”

  1. My 4th and 5th grade gifted language arts students just love science fiction. It is the one genre that really piques their interest across the board.

    My favorite book to read with them is John Christopher’s The White Mountains – first in his Tripods trilogy from the 1960’s. It has well developed, deep thinking characters, lots of action, and lots of good literary devices to discuss. Plus, the story is the best…every year each class discovers their own take on the book, and it is great for getting them interested in reading the other two, and beyond. In 15 years of teaching this book, I have NEVER been bored as each class makes it their own. His book the Lotus Caves is also a great one.

    Another must is All Summer in a Day — a wonderful short story by Ray Bradbury. Set on Venus on the one day each seven years the sun breaks through. Like all good science fiction, it really deals with humanity at the root of the theme and plot. I love many of his stories, but this one in particular is perfect for 3rd and 4th graders.

    Another short story gem is Zoo — cannot remember the author — in which an O’Henry like twist at the end that kids just devour and talk about. That one was a great one for a socratic seminar.

    I find that my gifted kids have naturally found and enjoy science fiction on satellite, cable, and now Hulu, etc. online: Classics they seem to have found on their own are The Twilight Zone and films like the Day the Earth Stood Still — and others of the drive in genre like The 40 Foot Woman. Something about the science fiction themes — which we affectionately call: ” ___________ run amok” (scientist run amok, nature run amok, aliens run amok, etc.) captures where they are at the age I work with them. Most interestingly, it has given us a springboard over the past years to discuss how great periods of science fiction writing cluster like strange attractors in chaos theory with leaps in STEM strands — or political upheavals — Sputnik, Cold War, Space Race, and so forth. We talk about how science fiction can be creams of what can be possible and can be reactions to fears and discomfort with emerging technologies or scientific theories.

    Another must is Jules Verne . Also a science fiction film study course would be amazing. Starting with the 1902 Georges Méliès film, Le Voyage dans la lune.

    Science fiction’s allure is also due to it’s duality: scientific fact and fictional story — thus – Michael Crichton and Kurt Vonnegut, too.

    For secondary and collegiate — Brave New World – Aldus Huxley.

    I’m hoping that the Mars mission and other new developments will bring in another era of science fiction literature with which to challenge my students.

  2. There are so many great choices – With my yonger/lower classes I liked to use Monica Hugh’s Tomorrow City or Bev Spencer’s Guardian of the Dark. A story that I’ve used with Middle grades is Lois Lowry’s the Giver. Granted these are fairly common novel studies, but I still love them.

    One SF writer I love to use though that I don’t think many others use is J. Michael Straczynski. A TV/Movie/Comic author, I use excurpts from some of his scripts to teach my students about Character development. JMS often says that the key to good writing is knowing your characters, and that often his characters would basically write the stories for him. Also like so many good SF writers he used Aliens to let us look closer at human nature without getting offended. It also give me a chance to show my students that TV and Movies aren’t just moving images. They had to be written first – and quite often those stories need to be as detailed and compelling as some of the “classics”. Not always – but then there’s a lot of trashy novels out there too…..

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *