Podcasting

Hi bloggers,

Wow! Before this topic I never had anything to do with Podcasting, I believe I may have listened to them once or twice in a tutorial at uni before, however this was not exactly broadcasted to us students. Frankly, when I first seen podcasting as one of the tools we are to investigate and utilise I was quite stunned and a bit worries, mainly because I ddidnt really know what it was. I found a video on Youtube called Podcasting in Plain English (Commoncraft, 2008). which helped me to understand exactly what podcasting is and to what extant you can go with podcasting. Podcasting actually stands for Personal On Demand casting (Commonncraft, 2008). which means you can take broadcasts with you anywhere and listen to them anytime, hence personal on demand.

After extensive research I do believe podcasting is a great idea, however it's not something I could become dependen on as technology isn't always reliable as many technical issues occur all the time. it could be used effectively in classrooms, with children learning the process of how to retrieve these podcasts and listen to them. Now, children can even record their own too which could be good for presentation purposes. As many students have access to some form of a MP3. MP4 player and even ipods , teachers can develop activities around the use of them. Such as listening activities could be recorded by the teacher and downloaded onto these devices and taken home with comprehension questions the children have to complete for homework, receiving answers from the podcast. We need to keep in mind that not all students' have this access to devices though so if that's the case, maybe the above activity can be completed within the classroom if the schools can afford these types of resources.

Although, we need to keep in mind that "The power of this kind of technology should not be underestimated as this is a technology that is dear to to our students' hearts. Like video, the most impact is achieved in short segments of less than 10 minutes. (Central Queensland University, 2009). Keeping this in mind for the class activity that has been suggested, the students' ability to listen wouldn't exceed this 10 minutes so this could be potentially an effective activity.

I already know of podcasting being used in schools on ipods, which I observed at Parkhurst State School on the 27th of July, 2009. As the Conceptual ICT Learning Design Framework states "the cast majority of 21st century students are digital natives and media savvy. (Central Queensland University, 2009). A digital native is a person for whom digital technologies already existed when they were born, and hence has grown up with digital technology such as computers, the Internet, mobile phones and MP3s. (Wikipedia, 2009). Therefore, growing up with all this technology means the students' are highly capable of learning and using these technologies especialyl to keep interested and arousal levels high.

Do you think podcasting has the potential to be an effective learning tool?

Cheers,
Courtney.

References

Central Queensland University. (2009). Podcasting. Retrieved on 6th August, 2009, from: http://moodle.cqu.edu.au/mod/resource/view.php?id=671

Commoncraft. (2008). Podcasting in Plain English. Retrieved on 6th August, 2009, from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-MSL42NV3c

Wikipedia. (2009). Digital native. Retrieved on 6th August, 2009, from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_native