Richard Smith

Ah, the old "bears in the can" analogy. I will have to remember that one. Perhaps this discussion group will remember it as a warning that started a ball rolling.

Anyway....

Didn't mean to hijack your post and yank it into a new thread - I am still new at the moodle discussion management style and didn't realize what was going to happen when I clicked on "split." In any event, I am glad we're talking about what could go wrong, as I am sure that there are some major ones in podcasting.

I have an example, which is common to many of the technology "add ons" I bring to the classroom:

As soon as you bring something in to the classroom, even if it is "extra" and an "enhancement", someone is going to find it useful and start to depend/rely on it. And when it breaks, you will hear about it. Big time.

I blew the sound on my podcast last week and the grumbles were very loud. Even though there wouldn't have been any "buzzy" sound if I didn't go the extra mile and do the podcast. There would have been no sound at all. But nevermind. Now that I have started it, I have to do it every week. And do it well. Sometimes this is not what we, as teachers, are geared up to do.

Providing copies of your lecture notes is the same - if you never do it, no one will complain when you miss a week. But if you start... well, heaven help you if you forget or the copier breaks down.

Any other "war stories" to mention - especially in the podcast realm?

...r

I'll take on the "who has the time" question and suggest that there is room (I hope) for some less highly produced content in the podcast format.

Just like PageMaker resulted in lots of really bad desktop publishing, it also resulted in a lot more newsletters and so on getting distributed. And, gradually, some people got better at it and even started to earn a living with it.

I think podcasting tools are like PageMaker 1.0 at present. And most of us are not familiar enough with the principles of audio production to create a good aural experience for our students.

And, I'd suggest, almost NO ONE knows what to usefully do with the tiny little screen on an iPod or mobile phone.

So we have a long way to go.

That said, I have found that there ARE ways to produce acceptable results AND not kill yourself doing it.

In my case, I have built the podcast into an activity that I already do - prepare lectures to be delivered in the classroom. And, to save my sanity, I don't record the lectures separately, I record them WHILE I am lecturing. And to make that possible, I use a combination of suitable software (I can't recommend ProfCast highly enough) and help from our technicians.

I have created a podcast about creating podcasts, if you'd like to see it you can look at it by clicking on the linked file, above.

So, I have created a new thread, using Paul's intro as the starting point. In this post, he asks - who has time for all this?

In other postings in the intro thread we heard from people (Wai-Ling) who wondered about the impact of slow or no internet connection, and the dangers of "backlash" from school administrators, parents, supervisors who might see this as a waste of time/money or worse a distraction/pollution fo the educational environment (Heather).

We also had the basic question of what - exactly - is being added here, and the concern that we're just playing with new toys to do something that has already been done to death (cassettes with audio).

I've responded in part to the latter concern in the "benefits" thread, but I am sure there is more to say on both that concern as well as the others raised here.

Since the "reply" function seems to work pretty well (once you set moodle up to show threaded discussions), let me suggest that this area could be used to both question and respond to those questions - what problems do you see and what - if any - workarounds are available?

...r

I seem to have deleted it from my computer, but if you go to iTunes and click on "Podcasts" and then "Health" you'll see many, many examples.

Quite a few are about sex, and I am all for sexual health, but that's probably not what you're looking for in terms of first aid.

Ah, never mind... I tried using the "search" function and found one. It isn't the one I saw earlier - this one is from st johns ambulance - but it is pretty good.

http://www.sja.org.uk/iFirstAid/

...r

Imagine a podcast in which the plants are featured with pictures, and your tips/advice/warnings about them are the audio accompanying them. And, because they are chapters, and you put them in alphabetical order (perhaps simply by creating a powerpoint presentation with a flower/plant on each slide, in alphabetical order, and using profcast to record that), people can scroll throught them using the thumbwheel on their iPod. Can you see a guidebook in the works? Now, imagine a version of this in a few years time in which people can *record* annotations or feedback, attach those to the chapters, and upload those to a merged RSS feed...

There is already a slick little first aid podcast, with a separate item for each little emergency. Not that I look forward to the person leaning over me (perhaps I have slipped on the path, while listening to your horticulture guide in the woods...) and saying... "hang on, I think the batteries are gone in my iPod... I'm not sure how to treat that!"

Welcome to the discussion.

..r