Confessions of a Podcast Junkie: A Student Perspective

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(The following was cross-posed in the podcasting blog, Podcasting Your Class)

What are some student perspectives on podcasting? Carie Windham, former undergraduate student, North Carolina State University, and current graduate student, University of Ulster, Northern Ireland presents her own views and experiences with podcasting as well as views from several students she interviewed in the paper: Confessions of a Podcast Junkie: A Student Perspective.

In “Confessions…”, Windham recounts her own introduction to and involvement with podcasting (and how she became a “podcast junkie”) and cites student data and interviews from University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of British Columbia, Bentley College, Duke University, and DePaul University. Some of the conclusions are as follows:

All the students identified the same benefits to podcasting technology:
• The ability to access course content on a 24-hour basis
• The chance to take their learning mobile so that listening can be done on the bus, at the gym, or on a walk between classes
• The creativity factor when making podcasts: they can present the content in a way that they choose
• The ease of access: podcasts can be easily downloaded from the Internet for free

For teaching and learning, the students saw concrete benefits to podcasting projects, especially when compared with standard modes of testing, such as writing a paper or doing a class demonstration:
• They were able to get “intimate” with course material, either by re-listening to course lectures and supplements or by teaching the rest of the class.
• They could showcase their projects to the rest of the community, expanding the reach of
the classroom to their friends or members of the community.
• They had the opportunity to review course material during pertinent moments in the semester, such as before exams or during course projects.
• They learned new technical skills, whether they were downloading files or creating new ones.

Finally, all the students reported that they enjoyed their classes more because of the inclusion of podcasting, and all hoped that more faculty members would use podcasting in the future. Michael Martinez-Mann said it best when he said of podcasting: “The possibilities are absolutely limitless. If there’s an idea, there’s a way to do it.”

Some of the sections of the paper also include:

  • Podcasting in the Real World: Student Use (and Misuse) of Podcast Technology
  • Notes on the Go: Offering Lectures and Class Notes via Podcasting
  • In Their Hands: Students as Podcast Creators
  • A Microphone and an Idea: Nonacademic Podcasting on Campus
  • If I Were in Charge: Tips for Faculty

Windham’s paper is informative, well-written, and entertaining, and was published in EDUCAUSE Review, Vol. 42 (May/June 2007). It also appears on the web in the resource-rich ELI Discovery Tool: Guide to Podcasting in the section “What Do Students Think?”

While whitepapers, research, and case studies are certainly useful, it’s definitely refreshing to get student perspectives directly from students in their own voices.

Who’s Afraid of Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and the Big Bad CMS.

Yet another great video, Institutional Fear, presented at the 2008 ELI Educause Conference in the Fear 2.0 digi-drama session “Who’s Afraid of Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and the Big Bad CMS?” Session Abstract:

Web 2.0 tools have the power to transform education. Such a transformation requires that faculty, students, and institutions take risks. With those risks comes fear, which is often unarticulated. How do you tackle this fear and make real change? (Join us to face this fear together in a multimedia, interactive miniplay).

The four discussion-provoking videos in the session were created and presented by faculty and staff at the University of California, the University of Texas, the University of Mary Washington, Bryn Mawr College, Oberlin College, and Middlebury College.

For a look at pedagogy and practice, interested faculty might also want to read “Wikis and Podcasts and Blogs! Oh, My! What Is a Faculty Member to Do?” from last fall’s Connect.

In the meantime, enjoy “Institutional Fear”… Do You Fear It?

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A Vision of Students Today: By, Students.

If we begin to explore the issues and causes of stagnation in education, the students and the student experience are both central to the discussion. What is the student experience of the classical models of education that exist today? In what ways are today’s students unique, different from the past? Where can we get an insider look? How about a group of 200 Kansas State University students who made a YouTube video on the subject…
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Last fall, Professor of Cultural Anthropology Michael Wesh collaborated with 200 students who surveyed themselves and created this video summarizing “some of the most important characteristics of students today – how they learn, what they need to learn, their goals, hopes, dreams, what their lives will be like, and what kinds of changes they will experience in their lifetime”:

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What say you? Feel free to respond in the comments!

Web 2.0 or Fear 2.0: Are We Stagnating?

time_large.jpgTravel back two years in time, way back to 2006. The read/write web, or “Web 2.0” (also synonymous with “connection, collaboration, and individual expression”), had finally attracted enough mainstream attention for Time magazine to name “You” Person of the Year in their year-in-review January ’07 issue. While the explosion of the read/write web has grown quickly from its humble beginnings, this rising tide of innovation (and opportunity) isn’t slowing, isn’t going to go any slower, and certainly shows no signs of stopping.

Have we caught up with Fair Use, the DMCA, and copyright law? Do we understand these changes, or do we fear them? Do we leverage this new revolution? How about inside the “hallowed halls of our institutions of higher education and learning”? Are we adapting? Or are we stagnating? The following short video was presented at the 2008 ELI Educause conference and more poignantly calls attention to some of these issues:

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Digital Natives Survey: Instructional Technology in College Courses

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Reading the Digital Natives blog as I usually do, I stumbled on an interesting post regarding a survey the group just completed about student opinions and experiences on the usefulness of instructional technology in college courses.

The survey covers all the latest technologies, from simply posting an interactive digital syllabus (with links to resources) to recorded lectures, podcasting, videos, blogs, wikis, and course websites. The overall responses were largely positive, with students who have actually been exposed to and thus used these technologies in their courses giving higher positive ratings to them than those who have not.

Rather than try to summarize it here, I suggest reading the post and viewing the report they have kindly posted for download at the end.

To learn more about the Digital Natives academic research team, visit their wiki pages.

The Video Revolution, Broadband, the Mobile Web, etc.

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What is the state of the video revolution, video internet delivery, broadband, “smartphones”, education, entertainment and the mobile web?

Here’s a round-up of some recent links on these subjects:

  • In a video-taped panel discussion, Walt Mossberg, tech writer and reviewer for the Wall Street Journal discusses the video revolution and the problem the United States has with Broadband on beet.tv.
  • iTunes has become the number one music retailer in the United States, surpassing brick-and-mortars like Best Buy and Target in 2007, and finally Wal-Mart in 2008. Through iTunes you can also watch and rent movies on your computer, mobile device, or directly to your TV with no computer required.
  • More user-friendly set-top boxes for viewing web content on televisions will be coming to market to join the likes of Apple TV and Tivo (with Amazon’s unbox content), with Blockbuster, among others, now working on devices.
  • As for the mobile web in education, mLearning, (the shortened term for Mobile Learning) research, studies, whitepapers, and initiatives have been growing, with the work of many schools and universities informing the developments and discoveries. For one recent example among many, see Abilene Christian University’s initiative and list of resources on the subject.