Handheld Learning - learning with mobile and ubiquitous technologies

Dear All,

I'm just starting to mull over the issue of podcasting, in particular, is there an underlying educational benefit or is it just simply hype? Please see http://www.mobile-learning.blog-city.com/read/1291821.htm to read my current thought processes.

Of course, this thought process is ongoing through iterative cycle after iterative cycle and as part of that, I thought, what do you people think ? So, where are people in terms of developing rigorous arguments to support their educational deployment? Is this simply a fringe activity that will never make it into the mainstream

Your thoughts, or links to articles would be good.

:-)
Hi Andy

I was confused, for a while as to why I could not get to your site, then eventually spotted the typo.
bog-city :-)  Reminds me of Stoke for some reason (for any stoke residents getting upset by this , my reference is to the vast amount of porcelain ware that can be seen in some parts of the city...)

it brightened my morning anyway.....

Thanks for the term "narrowcasting" Graham :-)

What exactly makes "???casting"  this all so different from recording stuff on cassettes and listening to it on a walkman......

(I will now put on a  fireproof suit and take cover)

It's about the means of distribution.

No doubt when you were a lad and wanted to record the John Peel show you would wait for it to come on the 'broadcast' radio and then hit the record button on your tape deck. Today of course with timers you could still do the same thing and the Open University has relied on the humble VCR for just that purpose while using the deadzone early morning TV slots to broadcast their TV material to a relatively narrow audience who unless they were very keen to get the "live broadcast" would set their VCR (and then discover that they'd recorded something obscure from an entirely different channel!)

Podcast is only different from a regular click and download because it is wrapped in some XML data and you can use a bit of software on your host PC to "listen" for when new podcast are available for download in the same way you might set up an RSS news feed. Clever software then will download your podcast and then it'll be sitting in your iTunes library or whatever you want to use to listen to it on.

There's a good "how-to" and backgrounder on podcasting here:

http://www.engadget.com/entry/5843952395227141/

Podcast is a trendy word for pretty much regular tech. Often more useful is to have the "shows" encoded as MP3 files with ID3 tags that then tell you what the file is long after you've forgotten what the filename stands for.

You never know we might end up putting some shows in the software library on this site 

I can't claim responsibility for the term "narrowcasting" as it's been around for years and all these recent incarnations are just fad's for funky sounding words in my opinion but the point is that it has very different mechanics to a broadcast system like radio or television which is effectively one signal boomed out to a large audience whereas a narrowcast is aimed at a very specific community of interest and may be accessed at random times.

In a broadcast model your costs of distribution don't increase with a rise in audience. However a seriously important thing to realise before everyone jumps on the podcast / narrowcast bandwagon is that in this model every new member of your audience increases your distribution costs because they are each downloading a file from your web server and bandwidth costs money. The alternative is to use a peer to peer system for podcasting which is a take one and pass it on model similar to systems such as Kazaa, Acquisition or BitTorrent.

Something that heavily stacks in the favour of podcasting is that the community potentially controls the means of production and distribution as well as its content. Of course, then it's only a matter of time before they Daily Mail catch on and a front page to ban this "evil filth" will soon appear.

Dear Tony,

I loved them    What a wonderful use - if others haven't head them then I strongly advise that you listen to Radio WillowWeb. This sort of use must add significant value.

I need to ask, how do the students script these, is it a collaborative effort by a number of people and then they take it in turn to "soak up the fame and glory" or is it an individual effort? Also, is this integrated within the classroom, i.e., the theme maps to the topic being taught and it's expected that a willowWeb session will be created?

Have you any idea of anyone outside the specific group listens? For instance, is there an active buy in from parents?

Great stuff - has given me both food for thought in terms of the podcast that I provide for one of the services I manage, while also to bring into my teaching and assessment.

Is anyone else creating or getting students to create podcasts?

Andy,

We have used a variety of ways to do script our podcasts.  For some,  I worked with a small group of students who created all of the content. Other Willowcasts had each student in a classroom research and write a segment.  Then the segments were presented to the class. The teacher and class picked which segments would actually be recorded for Radio WillowWeb.  Of course, in deciding which ones to pick, thought has to go into not only picking a variety of segments and topics, but which ones are well written, interesting, and presented well. The process is just as important to learning as the final podcast product. And students take it really seriously because they know what makes a good Willowcast and they want to be part of it!

The students loved recording the podcasts—they like to be the stars of the show.  Students also composed the music in Apple’s Garage Band software. I actually do the post production to put the final product together and online.  The students in our school tune into Radio WillowWeb whenever they have free time with a computer. Many parents have listened to Radio WillowWeb and think it's great.  However, I don’t think many are actually subscribing to the podcast—they just visit the website.  I think when podcasting becomes more mainstream and easier to subscribe to (maybe in less than 2 months with the new version of iTunes), more parents will subscribe.  We do, however, have many non-Willowdale subscribers and have received lots of positive feedback.  The students know they have  real audience out there listening.  Our Willowcast #1 was even rebroadcast on a radio station in California.  Those second graders thought that was the coolest thing ever (and I did too)!

Well it's not just podcasting, there is also vodcasting.

I've just been playing with FeederReader and I stumbled on Vodcasting - Video on Demand Publishing. There are some examples linked from the FeederReader site http://feederreader.pocketcasting.com/viewtopic.php?t=61. I must say, I thought there was real potential in terms of both learning and teacher centred approaches. In terms of production and distribution would be very straightforward, all you need is the appropriate educational application. That said, I'm a simple man, who likes simpler technologies so I'll be sticking with further evaluation of podcasting and leave vodcasting to those more "on the edge"