StigmergicWeb

I’m back from the week-long blog-hiatus, and I did manage to get a few things taken care of (although just as much got added to my to-do list as I managed to cross off). And staying off the blog was extremely difficult at times, especially after learning that the EdTech Posse has been shortlisted for this year’s edublogger awards. (Although I did mention this on the EdTech Posse site - was this cheating on my hiatus? Hmmmm…)

Although I have mixed feelings about these sorts of awards, I am going to buckle under to the needs of my ego and suggest that, if you do listen to the EdTech Posse podcast, you should go cast your vote for the 2005 EduBlogger awards, but only if you listen to the podcast and you like what we are doing.

I suppose my problem with awards of this nature is that it tends to be more of a popularity contest than an award based on the intrinsic merit of what someone is doing. Of course, it feels great to make it to the short list; I love it whenever we get any sort of feedback about the podcast. Its great to find out that there are people listening and grooving along with our conversations. But it doesn’t make a difference if there are ten thousand listeners or 10 - if our conversations are meaningful to you and maybe give you pause for reflection, I am glad that we did that for you. If had to choose between quality and popularity, however, I’d rather be putting my energies towards making a podcast that I felt had some terrific quality to it rather than putting my energies towards making my podcast popular. Some people will suggest that you can do both, but my motivation will always be to produce a podcast that is good enough that I listen to it again after I’ve posted it, even if that does mean I have to listen to the sound of - ugh - my own voice. (Do I really sound like that?)

So, as I’ve said, if you like what we do then by all means vote for us - my ego will be eternally grateful. If not, then I’d encourage you to vote for someone who does work that you think could use some more attention than it may already receive. If the EduBloggers awards becomes a forum for bringing attention to some of the high-quality but perhaps less well known edubloggers, it could transcend the level of mere popularity contest that too many awards and awards shows sink to.

In a conversation about podcasts (and many other things) earlier today with Rick Schwier, Rick was noting that his early skepticism about podcasting had transmogrified into a sort of amazement that we even have listeners to the EdTech Posse podcast. I admitted that I was kind of curious about that, especially trying to figure out why we have an audience! Out of all the possibilities for how someone could spend their time, why would anyone be listening to four guys from Saskatchewan talking about educational technology?

The answer, coincidentally enough, was literally in my hands. Specifically, it was in the copy of Instructional Message Design, edited by Malcolm Fleming and Howard Levie that I was borrowing from the Rick Schwier library. This evening, as I was browsing through the section on audio and spoken word, I came upon this in the chapter Perception Principles written by William Winn:

Human speech is the most powerful and expressive medium the designer has available fo use in instructional messages. Given the ephemeral nature of speech and the need to supplant it on most occasions, why would the designer choose to use it for instruction? The answer is that human speech is expressively very powerful. It is the easiest way for the message designer to create mood, to appeal to emotions, to lighten or make more serious the “tone” of a message, to amuse, to sadden, to persuade, to coax, to chide, or to cajole.

A-ha! There’s a piece of the puzzle that was missing. When I listen to This Week in Tech, I’ve already heard most of the items that they discuss, or I could quickly read through the show notes to glean the content. I’m sure most of the listeners are in similar situations - knowing most or all of the information that is in a podcast. So why do I take the time to listen to TWiT for an hour every week?

Its that connection on an emotional, affective level that I am looking for (and probably many others). Listening to TWiT is like hanging out with Leo, Patrick and the rest of the gang. Its a much different feeling than watching because it feels, somewhat paradoxically, less passive than just observing them. I guess that whole theatre of the mind thing kicks in, so your brain is more engaged in creating the scene.

I see this affective connection as being a very powerful tool that could be used in education, especially distance education. Anderson, Rourke, Garrison and Archer have examined the importance of social presence, teacher presence and cognitive presence in computer mediated communication (see their site on communities of inquiry for more details - definitely stuff worth reading). Podcasts can be used to enhance all three elements, especially teacher presence and social presence. I suppose the question would be, and I think this would be a dandy one to get the whole thesis process underway, is how can podcasts be effective in enhancing teacher presence and/or social presence in distance education.

Its been a while, but I recently finished editing a file from the vaults, so Dean, Rick, Alec and I are pleased to present | The EdTech Posse: Podcast #008 - Rob, Dean and Rick. I uploaded and posted while in the midst of parent teacher interviews, so I forget the details of the conversation, but I remember we talked quite a bit about David Weinberger’s essay The New Is, and the idea of good-enough knowledge becoming more useful than exact knowledge.

Tod Mafin, most well known for his work with the CBC, will be heading out on a Canadian Podcasters Meetup tour. The closest it will be coming to me is in Regina (about 4-1/2 hours away from me) on December 10, which is a Tuesday night, so I don’t think I’ll be able to fit it in. Hmmmm - perhaps another of the EdTech Posse will be able to represent for us. There will also be stops in St. Johns, Halifax, Ottawa, Montreal, Winnipeg, Toronto, Calgary, Whitehorse and Vancouver so hopefully a lot of Canadian podcasters will be able to start connecting.

It was great to hear from Rick that I made a guest appearance at AECT 2005

Guess what came up on the screen when David was discussing podcasts? Can you guess? Yup, pardner, the EdTech Posse! The soothing tones of Rob Wall’s voice danced through the crowd. Very fun, and Rob, I’m still amazed that there are listeners, but I’m quickly becoming convinced.

I only wish I could have been there! ;^D

I have finally finished editing EdTech Posse Podcast # 7 featuring me, Dean Shareski and Alec Couros (Rick Schwier was unavailable for this one, but will return next time).

Enjoy!

I just came across this from Gardner Campbell: Gardner Writes - Dental Students “Not Numb” to Podcasts. The link to the story didn’t work, but apparently dental students at the University of Michigan are creating and listening to podcasts of their professors’ lectures.

I’m not sure if I’m going to jump up and down and shout Huzzah, or just shrug my shoulders and smirk knowingly. Its so cool to see this happening, but at the same time it comes as no surprise. The movement of educational content on to podcasts is going to happen, probably much more quickly than universities are ready for. I know that students in many programs often organize note-taking groups. Many students record lectures for later listening (really effective for auditory learner’s like me). Now we have the technology to combine the two to create course podcasts. I think it would be a smart idea for universities to get ahead on this and start officially podcasting courses. Certainly this could be done to integrate students taking courses by distance education with a traditional lecture course. Do I expect that universities will actually get organized to do this? Probably not, but that won’t matter because if the universities don’t do it, then the students will.

Of course, if the class time is nothing more than a lecture, then the obvious question (at least to the students) is why isn’t it just podcast and eliminate the necessity of the instructor and students all being in the same place at the same time:

The time-and-place constraints of the classroom (beautiful, necessary, misleading constraints) distort our understanding of learning. The classroom is one node of attention and focus, with ramifications we could imagine more creatively.

Absolutely true. When the classroom becomes a stage for a regularly scheduled monologue, education is reduced to mere content delivery. But if we can move some of the lecture (which is often a necessity) into an alternately delivered format that can be produced and consumed asynchronously, that opens up class time as a forum for a genuine meeting of minds. Of course, that may be exactly one some universities and some instructors are afraid of.

UPDATE - Gardner fixed the link to the story. Thanks to him for posting the update.

I’ve tried a few different methods for recording Skype calls involving various software solution. Some solutions worked better than others, but none were as good as I would like. Finally the solution occurred to me - reduce the load on my CPU and RAM on my laptop (Celeron 1.33 GHz with only 256 MB of RAM - its time for an upgrade), by getting my iRiver to do the job.

So I gave it a try earlier tonight while talking with Dean Shareski via Skype, and it worked quite well. My basic setup is:

• The audio line out from the laptop goes into the line in on the iRiver (using the male/male plug that came with the iRiver)
• The microphone jack on my microphone/headset goes into the line in on the laptop
• The headphone jack on the headset goes into the headphone jack on the iRiver
• The microphone is not muted on the master volume control panel (found in the sound and audio devices control panel. Finding the right volume on the microphone requires a bit of experimentation, but the Skype Echo Test service works very nicely for checking it out
• Set the iRiver to record from the line in. Start recording, and anything that comes through your headphones is going into the iRiver. If you have a nice volume adjust widget on your computer, you can adjust the rec0rding volume quite easily.

I’m hoping to try this out on the next podcast with the posse! Stay tuned.

The latest EdTech Posse podcast is now available - Podcast #6 - Favourite tools in our EdTech toolbelts. Enjoy!

The EdTech Posse is riding once again with a new podcast:

• Podcast #5 - Talking with Stephen Downes about online learning and Web 2.0 | The EdTech Posse (link to website)
• Podcast audio link