Podcasting for Learning
Stephanie and I attended a workshop yesterday at mLearn 2008 run by Palitha Edirisingha (author of this book) on Podcasting and Learning. The focus was both practical (in groups we planned and made a 3-min podcast using Audacity) and theoretical (we discussed a 10-factor framework for considering how podcasts can fit into teaching and learning). Most of the data Palitha used was based upon the UK HEA-funded IMPALA project (Informal Mobile Podcasting and Learning Adaptation) which took place across seven universities and involved 500 students.
A couple of things that I took away from the workshop which I thought were really useful (apart from a free copy each of the book which came out of the project – see myself or Stephanie if you’d like to borrow a copy):
1. To do properly podcasts take a lot of planning. Even short audio podcasts require a clear beginning, middle and end and need to be planned within an overall scheme of work or course overview.
2. Podcasting is perhaps best thought of as enabling new and creative ways of learning rather than reinforcing traditional ways of learning. I suppose there is still a place for the video podcast of the lecturer ‘lecturing’ to her/his students, but we ought to think of how podcasts can enable collaborative, reflective and active learning by students.
I will be shamelessly stealing some of Palitha’s ideas in the podcasting basics workshops that I will be running over the next few weeks (email Eileen Treanor to book yourself on these sessions which are limited to 10 people at a time).
