I’ll be facilitating the Podcasting as a Teaching/Learning Strategy session at PodcasterCon on Saturday (January 7). If you haven’t registered already, and are within driving distance of Chapel Hill (which a good part of the U.S. population is), please consider coming.
The education session will be especially interesting for two reasons. One is that there will likely be equal mixes of participants from the K-12 arena, from higher ed, and folks who are not directly involved in education at all. The perspectives are varied, and I hope that an open and lively sharing will be beneficial for all communities of interest.
The second reason is that Podcasting, like so many technologies as they are initiated in education, is a solution without a problem, a hammer without a nail. In June, I attended Apple’s unveiling event for iTunes 4.9 at the National Educational Computing Conference in Philadelphia. Andy Carvin (Waste of Bandwidth) and I (Connect Learning) recorded a co-podcast while in line (with hundreds of educators), waiting for admittance to the way too small room. We interviewed many of the people who are in line, and not one could comfortably describe what a podcast was. None had ever produced a podcast and only a couple had heard one. But they were all there, because it was the buzz of the conference.
In preparation for this session, I ask a couple of education technology mailing lists for some essential questions that we might tackle in the Saturday session. Leslie Simonfalvi, a teacher educator in Budapest, put it very well as she asked how we might utilize podcasting and other emerging technologies when “…quite a few students, especially gadgetophiles, think about modern learning modes as escape routes.” She continues with some typical alibis, which I included on the sessions wiki page.
In my opinion, students view technology as an escape route because they see such a vast distance between the learning experiences of their classrooms and the information experiences that they have invented using IM, text messaging, blogging, networked video games, etc. We’ve left it up to them to meld these new technologies into their lives while we have been too cautious about adapting our classrooms and curriculums to the changing information environment.
I have some ideas and most of them come from a handful of innovative educators who have invented new teaching and learning strategies around media production and narrowcasting, and I’ll share them on Saturday. But I think that the real value of this session will be a mixing and remixing of perspectives that we will all learn from.
Hope to see you there.
Dave,
What are some of your “wiki expectations” or should I say “wiki ground rules” as it related to the great wiki page for your Saturday session? The wiki really excites the teacher in me. I want to try to post a similar wiki using Moodle in my classroom, and would like to see your “wiki user guidlines”, so I can try them with my darlings…
Looking forward to seeing ya’ll Saturday on the Hill…
David,
I like your comments about the changing information environment. I had the pleasure of having a wonderful old friend for dinner last night and as a lifetime newspaper editor, and college professor we had a very lively conversation about the future of newspapers and print media. We talked at length about how blogging is changing the face of how we are gathering and creating information. We agreed that we are reading and writing more than ever, and we are writing for an authentic audience. Interesting perspective from my husband about the lack of editors, from the editor himself he said that is the future, everyone can become a global publisher.
Throughout the converstaion/debate it was so interesting to see the focus was about the information, and how the vehicle to get the information is fundementally changing! Over lunch today my husband read the morning paper, while I caught up on my blogs. It is all about the information environment! I am going to get him blogging soon!
Happy New Year!
meg
“…too cautious about adapting our classrooms and curriculums to the changing information environment.” Yes – and to the changing nature of students and disciplines and cultures…
At a recent conference I heard Art Costa talk about the 16 Habits of Mind as great tools for learning BUT that it was just as much about the WHAT of learning and teaching as the HOW.
I think when students become proficient with new habits of mind they can become more critical of out-dated curriculum and want to escape. Or they can become cynical because their new thinking tools and skills are not used to question their own and others fundamental assumptions about the world in which we live in.
My nephew tells me he does much more complex thinking in his online gaming environments than he does at school. Sad.
David,
You hit upon something that has been nagging at me for a month. I read in a blog entry and a magazine article in the past month the prediction that within a few short years the percentage of students in this country enrolled in publics schools versus private, charter, etc. would only be about 20%. This has really bothered me. This statement from your post made a lot of sense and helped me feel a bit better about things. “However, we must hold on to the notion that public education is a cornerstone to democracy, that all citizens, children and adults, deserve access to effective opportunities to learn, the tools to learn and work knowledge, and unfettered access to the global conversation. The alternative, In my opinion, is a democracy that isn’t.” I know there are other ways, but in the interest of equality and fairness doesn’t the public school system have to survive as well as change.