Scott McDonald and I are co-teaching a course in Penn State’s College of Education this Spring. We’re teaching Curriculum & Instruction 597, Disruptive Technologies for Teaching and Learning. One of the things we’ve decided to do is produce a course podcast as much as possible. Today we sat down and recorded the first podcast of the semester — well before the semester begins. This is really just a course introduction and a little view into what is going to go on. The included podcast is the first cut — complete with strange music breaks. I hope this version makes the cut … feedback is welcome.
I had big plans for using podcasts this semester, but I dropped the ball. It was working well for the first module. The thought was every Friday I’d post a Q&A thread on the course blog. After collecting all the questions Monday morning, I’d produce a quick podcast to address the questions. It opened up more time in class to focus on new content and discussions, but I just didn’t take the time necessary to continue the pattern after week 5 and beyond.
Seems like the only problem I see with all of it — time is too short. I am hoping Scott and I can keep the podcasting up during the semester — I especially like the idea of doing a quick question and answer session to recapture some class time. We are using Pligg at the center of the course site (a digg.com clone), so I am wondering if we couldn’t do a Digg Nation style podcast every week pulling the highlights off the site and discussing them.
Also, Podcast Producer will make the whole process much easier in the coming months.
Cole,
What a great idea. I hope you can work with it, making time for Podcasts is always difficult and it always takes more time than you think.
Also, I know of a great book for your text…GGG for Learning. (unbias endorsement…of course:)
Karl … we’re committed to this one. Who knows … I did podcasting for my class a year ago and I did it much less than I hoped, but the students rated it very highly. I wonder how much lecture podcasting we’ll do … it’ll be interesting. I am hopeful that we can earmark the last 30 minutes of each class for a roundtable style discussion with the students. If we pull that off I’ll be extremely happy! Thanks for the comment!
The other advantage Cole and I have is that we can have a more chat-like Q&A. We can play off each other and it is more like a conversation. Hopefully that will keep us, and the class, more interested in reading.
So Scott, are we committed to ending “class” at least 30 minutes early and break out the mics for a real conversation? I think it would be a very interesting way to get a handful of our students really engaged in something. Thinking hard enough about the week’s topic to have a potentially very public discussion via the podcast … I like the concept quite a bit.
Yep. I think it sounds good as well. I also think it will be interesting to see what sort of wider audience we draw, especially if we can get folks from the K-12 schools giving us a sense of how our notions will translate. Hopefully podcasting is not something that IT is blocking on networks in schools.
Scott
Great podcast, I wont be in your class, but I hope I can be one of those that are stretching the walls of your class at least a bit. Looking forward to the class.
Scott and Cole –
I enjoyed the first one and have subscribed via iTunes so I won’t miss an episode! This sounds like a really interesting class, and like Lee, I cannot attend ‘physically’ but instead, I will attend as ‘virtually’ as I am able.
Looking forward to it!
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It appears as if I am the first student to comment on the course’s first podcast. This experience is definitely “inaugural” as you put it for me. I have never been introduced to a course before using any other medium than face to face contact. At first it was difficult to acclimate myself to such virtual contact, however, as time progressed, I was interested and engaged in the program despite the “strange” music breaks, which really weren’t so strange. I think it will be important to see the diversity of experience with technology that each of us brings to the course. For me, I am quite the fish out of water at the moment. However, I hope that as the course progresses, I will not only have found my way back to the water, but I will also be swimming with an ever-increasing school of technologically savvy fish in our vast virtual ocean.
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