Podcasting

Podcasting Blog Post February 16, 2010

Reflections on the process of learning about the tool (3 points)

Well, I’ve been podcasting for a couple of years now in my EDIT class at RDC and I have to say that it is one of the most rewarding things that I do for my students. A great example of how helpful this is to my students comes from last term when I had a student who missed three weeks of class with H1N1 and when she came back to class she hadn’t missed a beat. Part of this was due to the fact that I podcast all my lectures. This term I have a student who is going to miss the same amount of time with another illness and she will not be behind when she comes back. As a side note, I also post all my lecture notes that I capture from my Smartboard and I videocast all the project-based activities we do. I addition, I also offer rubrics, checklists and exemplars for all assignments my students are expected to complete. So my students know exactly what I expect of them for everything from lectures, quizzes, tests, projects and presentations.

With all this said, I have to admit that podcasting can be a bit time consuming. When I first started podcasting, I heavily edited my podcasts for every single thing. All the ahs and ums and pregnant pauses. Since that time, I have gotten smarter and a little less particular in what I include in my podcasts. I still edit for long stretches of nothingness, but now I kind of think about my podcasts, as the raw, unedited Director’s Cut!! I also add intro and exit music to all my podcasts (something my students know) to make them a bit more professional.

In my learning curve, I have used and experimented with a bunch of different audio editing and mixing software. Some of the best comes from NCH. I use their RecordPad, WavePad and MixPad suite. I also use Audacity which is free and is a really great piece of software. I have also recently been playing with TwistedWave which is the equivalent to NCH’s WavePad and I like TwistedWave better. Much nicer interface and easier to use. It’s a bit pricey at $80 US.

Since I have moved to Blogging my class, I have started using VoiceThread (and I bought the premium version because it’s that good) to upload and then embed my podcasts into my Blog. I could only have one podcast on my free VoiceThread account because of the size of them. Another plus to using VoiceThread (which I bought on the advice of the Twitter folk that I follow) is that I am not using up a bunch of space on RDC’s servers and the Blog will be there for a long time (longer than BlackBoard) for my students to have access to after they leave RDC.

Please don't listen to all of this!!

Oh, did I mention that podcasting is important enough to me that I bought a $700 Sennheiser wireless microphone system? It’s incredible but it’s a battery hog.

Discussion of the tool in terms of your personal learning (e.g. me as a learner, me as a parent, me as part of a social group) (3 points)

As far as my personal learning goes, I think I have outlined this above. One thing that I didn’t mention, was that I really do love fiddling with the waveforms that are created when you create a podcast. I like mixing different tracks and just editing the sound files. I could very easily see myself as a sound engineer in another life!! But…, don’t get me wrong, I am not a fan of my own melodic voice! While I’m on a tangent, try Voice Candy. You can make your voice sound like a chipmunk or even Darth Vader!! It’s the best $12.00 I’ve spent in a long time!!

This podcast is just for fun and is an example of what you can do with Voice Candy. I have demo'd all the voices that Voice Candy has to offer. If you want to karaoke to this, scroll back up to the top of this post and follow along. I used the first three paragraphs of this post as my lyrics!

My parental role starts and ends with my kids playing around with Voice Candy and getting a few laughs from the different voices. My wife and kids are not real Web 2.0 folks, even though my wife’s grade team at her school uses Wikispaces to share info with the kids and parents. My kids don't even see the value of having a Facebook account and rarely access their accounts.

About the whole social group thing. I really don’t have one. I am the only person in my whole department who podcasts and no one really has an interest. There are a few other folks around RDC who podcast, but I am not sure to what degree. I don’t really use podcasting as a social tool. I use it as a professional one in my classroom for my students. Actually, I am not even sure how or why I would use it as a social tool within the context of my "social group."

Discussion of the tool in terms of your professional learning (e.g. me as a teacher, me as a school leader, me as a teacher-librarian, me as a member of professional learning communities/networks). This takes into account technology integration, use in schools, pros and cons, etc. (3 points)

I can see a couple cons. One of course is time and most classroom teachers might not be willing to give up the amount of time required to learn how to use and create podcasts. It really does take a while to get the editing and mixing process figured out.  In addition to this, if no one listens to the podcast, then your time is wasted. Another obvious con might be the fact that everything you say and then create becomes public record. This is one reason I like VoiceThread. It offers the whole podcast as a streamed file like a YouTube video and thus isn’t as easily edited by your audience. One of the pros as I mentioned previously, is knowing that my students can access my lectures wherever and whenever they want regardless of the time of day.

I also think that podcasting and the use of similar tools makes me a better teacher. I think I am using and modeling effectively the use of 21^st century teaching tools that my students could use when they are teachers in the classroom with their own kids and parents. This is one of my primary goals in my teaching at the college level. I have always purposefully design what I do and what I have my students do so that no one can leave my class and lay the big, “when are we ever going to use this stuff?” line on me or their peers.

As a parting anecdote from a PD session I just attended (and I’m paraphrasing here), student retention and recall increases up to 15% with the addition of podcasts and posted lecture notes for students.

When I am not creating my own podcasts, I am listening. I am a big fan of Leo Laporte and his TWiT (This Week in Technology) website. These folks really keep me up-to-date on what’s going on in the world of Apple and technology in general.

Demonstration of new knowledge (3 points)

The use of VoiceThread on my blog and the trial of TwistedWave are a couple indicators of new learning. The learning curve on both of these tools wasn’t too steep. TwistedWave is very similar to Audacity and WavePad. But as I said before, I think TwistedWave has a nicer and easier to use interface. The learning curve with VoiceThread was the embed code. Access and remembering where to get the code took me a long time to remember. The placement of the buttons to access the code aren’t intuitive. At least, not in my opinion. One other thing about VoiceThread that wasn’t intuitive or easy to remember was how to make the podcast public. This button is located at the bottom of the screen away from everything else just like the embed code button. This made it hard for me to remember to do and thus made the embedded podcast on my blog inaccessible to my students. Since starting to use VoiceThread, I have now figured out how to use the buttons and now regularly remember where the buttons are and apply the appropriate settings before posting the podcast. This of course saves me time in having to go back and redo these steps after the fact.

Evidence of Research and Further Reading (3 points)

I think I agree with Richardson when he states, “…barrier to entry is pretty low” (p. 111). Although if a person is going to play with the waveform of the podcast and do anything other than a raw recording, I think the learning curve increases drastically; enough for the average classroom teacher probably not to attempt podcasting in their room.

Another noteworthy thing that Richardson (p. 120) mentions is the use of podcasting for storytelling. I think this would be an excellent way for students to use this technology to accomplish a traditional task. Storycast is an interesting website that I see as having some interesting implications in the classroom. Another interesting website that offers an compelling look at podcasting is The Art of Storytelling. I think podcasting is a safe technology to use in the classroom because all anyone can “see” is the student’s voice. There isn’t any type of visual or image attached to a podcast that could compromise a student's safety.

Along the line of safety, another reason (kind of a tangent here) I like the website xtranormal is because students or the characters they are depicting are represented as avatars. Again, because the actual student’s image/picture isn’t being supplied, the safety level goes up for classroom use. I think the use of avatars will be a manner in which schools can identify students and the work they’ve authored safely.

References: 

Amadan, K. (2006). Benefits of podcasting for educators. Retrieved from http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/5-17-2006-96434.asp.

Fryer, Wesley A. (2005). Tools for the teks: Integrating technology in the classroom. Retrieved from http://www.wtvi.com/TEKS/05_06_articles/classroom-audio-podcasting.html

Morales, C. & Moses, J. (2006). Podcasting: Recording, managing, and delivering the classroom experience. Retrieved from http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/DEC0604.pdf

Riddle, Johanna. (2010). The tech effect: Podcasting in the classroom - a sound success. Retrieved from http://www.mmischools.com/Articles/Column/The-Tech-Effect/THE-TECH-EFFECT-Podcasting-in-the-Classroom--A-Sound-Success-60444.aspx

Saunders, D. (2009, January 21). Podcasting in the classroom [Video File]. Retrieved from http://vodpod.com/watch/1559009-podcasting-in-the-classroom