Thing #17 Podcasts

Be afraid, be very afraid of podcasts!!! I started this assignment last weekend and meant to knock it out in a couple of hours. Instead I subscribed to a bunch of podcasts and kept following links from one thing to another and the hours went by. So then every evening during the week, I came home with the resolution to finish this activity and the same thing happened. The moral of this story is that for the obsessively curious, you must be very disciplined when you start subscribing to podcasts. (and blogs)

Some of my general findings about podcasts were that I prefer video to audio and if a transcript is available I will read that before listening to the podcast. Even when the podcast is of a NPR program that I love to listen to when driving, I have a very hard time just sitting and listening to it. I need to be physically doing something, ... like driving a car. :-)

I subscribed to podcasts in two ways with iTunes and with my Google Reader. Right now I prefer my Google Reader because I really like having everything in one place. The cool thing about the Google Reader is that the podcasts are right in with the blogs, journal articles etc... When I select the title, the podcast opens with a player so I can listen or watch it right there. I'm also putting them in iTunes with the idea of eventually using my iPhone to listen to podcasts. The problem is that I don't like using the earbuds with my iPhone, the speaker in the phone isn't loud enough for me, I don't know how to make it play through my car speakers and haven't been motivated enough to figure it out.

Some Podcasts that I sampled:

• Geek!Ed! - The episode that I listened to was like sitting in at a grade level meeting where teachers are analyzing a problem and trying to figure out why they are having the problem. I wasn't vested in their particular problem, I wanted to know about the issue on a national or international scale. While it might have had some broader implications, I didn't really want to listen to the raw data. I would rather a researcher attend hundreds of meetings like it and synthesize the data for me with maybe some excerpts from individual meetings.
• NPR: Books Podcast - I subscribed to this podcast because book reviews and author interviews on NPR are how I primarily find books to read other than suggestions from friends. I often hear an author talking about a book and stop at the store and buy the book before I get home or I order it from Amazon.com that day. I also come into the office talking about what I just heard and my coworkers end up buying the book too. I really should get commissions.
• Scientific American: 60-Second Science - I subscribed to a bunch of science podcasts but this was one of my favorite. That may say something about my attention span. It is very well done and they get an amazing amount of information into 60 seconds. I even like the intro where they say, "This is only going to take a minute." It makes me smile every time.
• EarthSky - In this episode, they talk about damage Hurricane Ike did to the TX barrier islands. I can really see using episodes from short, well done podcasts like EarthSky in the classroom to provide relevance for concepts students are learning about in science.
• TED: Ideas worth Spreading - These are amazing talks by fascinating people about a whole range of ideas. We currently use this episode in the 5th grade curriculum to spark interest in the concept of adaptations.
  

There are several ways I can see using existing podcasts in the science classroom. When I was in high school, my biology teacher required us to read and review one science article a week from a list of approved journals such as Scientific American. This was one of my favorite assignments from the class and obviously made an impact since I still remember it 25 years later. I can see giving a similar assignment to students but also using podcasts in the list of possible sources. Another way to use existing podcasts would be to play particular episodes for the class to illustrate a concept or provide a real-world application for that concept. I would like to provide links to certain episodes in the on-line curriculum but I worry about how long the links will stay viable. Then I wonder if it would be breaking copyright to download some podcasts and load them directly into the online delivery system instead of providing links.

I will also be getting into the production end of podcasting out of necessity. Well not really podcasting because I don't intend to create content on a regular basis that people can subscribe to. I will however, be producing video and audio files that will be posted in a way that people have access to them. I need to create virtual field trips from the geology trip I took this summer. They will need to be produced in such a way that classroom teachers can use them with their students to address particular student expectations. I really need to get busy on that assignment. I also need to create files for the purpose of staff development. Both FOSS and STC have created teacher how to videos to guide teachers step by step through the lessons that go with their kits. I need to do the same thing for other things in the curriculum. Sometimes teachers can't make it to a traditional staff development session, they forget what was said at the training, or the training was canceled due to lack of interest. Short videos might provide just what they need, when they need it. My problem is that I don't really believe there will be much of an audience so I'm not very motivated to put in the hours needed to produce a good product.