StigmergicWeb

After a long and rejuvenating summer break, the EdTech Posse is back with some new podcasts. In our first podcast of the new season, Rick and I talk with brand new Posse deputy Heather Ross about open source in education.

EdTech Posse 2.1 - Open Source in Education

Daniel Mittleholtz is presenting about Multimedia Learning Theory (Mayer), and how media should be applied to provide optimum retention of information. (Daniel has a MLT blog, as well as a podcasting blog).

Started with an overview of the presentation and a slides summarizing Multimedia Learning Theory.

• problem of engaging learners online. We use e-mails and forums to engage students but that doesn’t work to engage all students (text bias)
• Text is a graphic medium! (Ref Earl Misanchuk’s work on text and enhancing learning)
• Seven principles of multimedia design

• Multimedia - we learn better when corresponding text and pictures are combined
  
• Spatial Contiguity - corresponding words and pictures should be next to each other
  
• Temporal Contiguity - corresponding words and pictures should be presented simultaneously
  
• Coherence Principle -
  
• Modality Principle
• Redundancy Principle
  
• Individual differences - design effects are stronger for low-knowledge learners than for high knowledge learners and for high-spatial learners than for low spatial learners

Good design involves giving students choices (audio on/audio off buttons for example) so they can optimize. The design has to be flexible enough to permit all these options.

Video is really good for engaging students and getting their interest. (Great video of his grand-daughter laughing - yep, that was engaging).

So - how does this relate to podcasts:

• We learn best when the text (or audio for a podcast) corresponds with the visual, so we can include a link to a powerpoint or pdf
• iTunes U (Stanford is the popular example). iTunes has some great features - the podcast can be listened to using the software instead of having to open another program. iTunes can also let the user listener listen to the first minute without having to download the whole thing.
• Demo - how to post a podcast. (Using the Movable Type blogs available at blogs.usask.ca. This is great because this is the stuff we didn’t have a chance to do in our session yesterday).
• Dan also posted a vodcast (Photoshop TV)

Dan mentioned a Windows program that generates m4v video files called Cleaner XL.

Today the EdTech Posse gave our very first presentation together - EdTech Posse: Podcasting in Real Time. Dean has already put a short description and some photos up over on Ideas and Thoughts from an EdTech. I have to agree with Dean that it was a pleasure to present with the rest of the posse. We have been connecting up via Skype and recording our conversations to impose on an unsuspecting world for almost a year and, as Dean has noted, its been the best PD experience I could hope for. Today, however, was the first time that all four of us were in the same room at the same time.



The premise for presentation was pretty simple - record a podcast for about 20 minutes, edit it, load it up to a server and put the entry on our blog all within the hour we had. The editing was made a little bit easier thanks to the beta version of Audacity 1.3, which includes a batch processing filter for cleaning up speech. I didn’t do any editing other than adding the podcast leadin and pressing the batch process button. The final audio mix was fairly decent - you can head over the the EdTech Posse site to judge for yourself. We might have a podcast of the full discussion from our presentation posted sometime soon. We did set up a Podcasting in real time wiki on wikispaces, initially to help in planning our presentation but I’ve started adding some podcasting resources. If you’d like to see or suggest any resources on podcasting, you can go ahead and add to the wiki or leave a comment here.

The rest of the conference has been going well, except that the wireless seems to keep denying me; I checked out the wireless on the U of S campus yesterday, and it worked flawlessly, but today it was showing me no love. Consequently, I have not had the chance to blog the conference live, although I hope to get some things written here before they completely escape my brain.

From EdTech Posse site - The Posse is riding to TLt 2006:

On May 1, all four members of the EdTech Posse will be presenting at the Teaching and Learning with the Power of Technology 2006 conference in Saskatoon. Our presentation about podcasting (no big surprise), is entitled Podcasting in Real Time. During the presentation, we will record, edit, upload and post a short podcast (at least, we hope that’s what we’ll be doing); we’ll also have a discussion around some of the instructional issues regarding the use of podcasts. In addition to the short, demonstration podcast we also hope to record and podcast the entire presentation.

There’s also a short audio note at the site saying much the same thing. Why the audio note? I have an iBook borrowed from the school that I’m taking to the conference (due to my laptop’s non-functioning screen), and it has the newest version of GarageBand on it. I’ve heard that this version of GarageBand has some integrated podcasting creation functionality, and I wanted the chance to play with it. My take on it was that it was pretty easy, but of course it doesn’t have the fine control like using a tool like Audacity.

I’ll put some links here to any audio or other stuff that we use in the presentation.

We were never really gone, actually, just all extremely busy. I think the conversation is worth the wait!

EdTech Posse Podcast #13 - Why is this worth doing in schools?

I have to admit that my reservations about Apple co-opting podcast production and distribution are beginning to falter. I still have a bad feeling about GarageBand because it seems to produce podcasts only in Apple’s proprietary formats (or am I mistaken about this? Please let me know). These probably could be converted to standard formats like mp3, but when the tools make it super easy to produce great content in proprietary formats, why would anyone bother? (Except for ed-tech nerds like you and me, of course).

So why the faltering of my opposition. Because Will Richardson linked to these terrific student produced digital stories this morning. I don’t think these sorts of things would have been produced if the only way to get it done was to use 5 or 6 arcane tools that needed to be MacGyvered together in order to work. Most people just don’t have the time or inclination to bother, nor do they care about the advantage of standardized file formats. And when I look at the results that can be produced by students using really easy to use tools, the educator part of my brain duct-tapes the ed-tech, open-source loving, ubergeek part of my brain that is trying to scream out in process. Enough of reading me - go look at some really cool stuff!

Long Elementary Student Podcasts

Rick Schwier has claimed that I have converted (or is that corrupted) him into a podcaster. P’shaw - Rick is a natural storyteller and speaker and, therefore, a natural for podcasting. He has started a new podcast

Now you hear me …

He is using the latest version of GarageBand to put together the podcasts and hosting it in a .Mac account, so the podcasts are in m4a format which, I believe requires iTunes to play, and the subscribe button on his page is for iTunes. Is the Apple-centric product the price for the ease of podcast production in GarageBand?

If you aren’t using iTunes, you might want to consider it just to get Rick’s podcast. Each one is short - 1 to 3 minutes - and does a great job of provoking thought and reflection. Its not quite EDCMM 802 (a class Rick teaches at the U of Saskatchewan in the Educational Communication and Technology program), but its good stuff!

That makes 3 of the posse - Rick, Dean and me (albeit irregularly on my own) - who are independently podcasting. I think its time Alec got into the act (but maybe after the dissertation is finished) and we can start our own EdTech Posse Podcast Network!

I just saw this via Alan, a site from the University of Wisconson-Madison that talks about designing educational podcasts podcasting @ the university of wisconsin - madison: Five Steps to Designing Podcasts that Teach

Interestingly enough, there is no advocacy of what seems to be marketed as a model for educational podcasting - just turn on the microphone, record your lecture, then try to convince your students that its not just the same old stuff repackaged in a flashy new suit. It seems like it still comes back to some of the tried and true practices of instructional design. The master will be pleased!

I just read this on BBC: Christmas Carol gets free podcast. What a perfect format for any of the works of Charles Dickens which were originally published in serial format. The mp3 files can be downloaded from The Penguin Podcast, or you can also subscribe to the Penguin Podcast RSS feed in your favourite podcatcher/aggregator.

The latest podcast with the posse - EdTech Posse Podcast #010 - Breakfast chat from SACE with Rob, Dean and Stephen is now up and available for your consumption.