Anything podcasting related – educational or otherwise
Teaching with Technology
Over coffee this morning a couple of us were discussing Mark Prensky‘s chapter on How to Teach with Technology (PDF), part of Becta’s Emerging Technologies for Learning: Volume 2. In his chapter which, it must be noted, is focused on secondary rather than post-secondary education, Prensky suggests that teachers shouldn’t be taught how to use the latest technology that should be left to the students. Instead energy should be re-focused:
“teachers must learn what these technologies are and can do, and understand them, but without necessarily becoming proficient in their use… …Teachers also need to help students apply technologies wisely to real problems, and to reflect and search for the deeper issues that the technologies raise, and to bring up and discuss these issues with the students…”
He goes on to give four examples based around wikipedia, podcasting, Instant Messaging and mobile phone cameras. The chapter is well worth a read if only for some of the great quotes he has from students! And then to consider if it applies to HE too…
Digital Media for Teaching workshop
CLT recently ran a workshop for the LSE Teaching and Learning Centre workshops programme called “Digital Media for Teaching”. You can find all of the links referred to at del.icio.us as well as PDF and Flash versions of the PowerPoint presentation on our course resources page. This workshop runs again on May 2nd. We also regularly run an “Images, Multimedia and copyright” designer workshop so look out for this on our workshops page – and we’ll advertise on our mailing list. You’ll find the handouts and links for this on our course resources page if you can’t wait. We also jointly run a ‘presentation skills’ (PDF link) workshop with the LSE staff development unit.
ALT-C Day 2, part 2
Just to out-blog Steve here’s my second posting of the day. This afternoon I went along and chatted to several poster presenters. Had a really interesting chat with people from Bristol about using podcasting. They have a blog which they’d really like people to post entries on about what they are doing with podcasting. I was telling them a bit about video lectures, podcasts and visualiser stuff we are doing at LSE, so Sarah and Kris do post something on: www.podcasting.blog-city.com
I also chatted some more to Iain at Glasgow Caledonian who works in the Saltire Centre and he might have a solution to our Fedora upload problem. I’ve passed on Marie’s e-mail so he’ll get in touch and he’s going to be at the Open Scholarship Conference in October. I also chatted to the Intrallect people who showed me the latest version of their repository software.
Just this moment I went to a session on e-portfolios from Shane Sutherland at Wolverhampton who have developed PebblePad. A neat tool which is really a personal learning environment as it contains blogs and many other tools which can be shared.
Right, that’s it from me as I need to get my glad rags on for the dinner tonight! Farewell folks!
Designs on E-learning Symposium
I’m ‘attending’ this Designs on E-learning symposium online as I can’t go in person for the whole day. The content is focussed on “innovations in technology and elearning in relation to art, design and communication subject areas” with, it seems, a focus on ‘Web 2.0’, blogging, podcasting etc.
However it was the format I wanted flag up. Comments made in the online discussion will be viewable by participants in face-to-face discussion:
“Participants attending online will be able to access face-to-face discussions and contribute through synchronous conferencing and face-to-face participants will be able to transfer to online discussions whenever they wish. Communication technologies will be used extensively throughout the symposium in order to provide multiple channels for discussion and multiple means of recording and representation. Both audio and video Podcasts will be made of the Symposium and will be available on the Designs on eLearning website following the event.”
There are currently about 50 online and 50 attending participants booked. I’ll post a report here too.
Matt
e-learning 2.0
The 2.0s are out in force…
Thanks to EdBloggerNews I’m now reading e-learning 2.0 – how Web technologies are shaping education.
DIVERSE conference – video in education
This week I (Kris Roger) am at the DIVERSE conference being held at Glasgow Caledonian University. I’ll try and summarise some of the sessions that I attend and maybe add some of my own thoughts along the way.
Apparently some of the conference is to be webcast, but I’ve yet to find where! There are also Diverse Flickr and YouTube groups – hopefully there will be something to see at some stage!
I’ll tag any follow up posts as Conference related if you’re interested.
Kris.
Classroom audio and video capture – Apreso and podcasts
LSE Centre for Learning Technology have been investigating various options for recording lecture audio and video over the past couple of years (with support from the Audio Visual and Technical Services units). This has ranged from simple audio recording with a voice recorder to full automated recording of all lecture audio and visuals displayed through a data projector.
One option we have looked at is the use of a digital video recorder (DVR) to capture audio from the lecture theatre PA system along with video output from the visualiser. During the 2005-2006 session we have been using a Kiss DP558 DVR, which is has a web schedule function and FTP server for download of the resulting video files. This has proved to be a bit ‘flakey’ and the post-production required to present and stream the lecture has been fairly tedious. But it has however been very useful as a proof of concept experiment.
So we were happy to find a solution in January 2006 called Anystream Apreso, which is essentially a software solution that captures 3 different inputs simultaneously (VGA projector, composite video and audio) and packages them into a web based presentation. The new system should eventually allow us to schedule the recording of lectures in LSE’s main lecture theatres without any intervention or production effort required between us setting a schedule for the term and the lectures appearing online – either on the wider web or through the current LSE VLE (WebCT). The system also allows lecture audio to automatically be published as ‘podcasts’ for playing on portable audio players such as the Apple iPod. We also already have a platform that can publish any lecture series recorded with a standard voice recorder as a podcast.
We are now working with the LSE Audio Visual unit to acquire the Apreso licences, the hardware (capture PCs and content management servers) and work on finding a solution to some fairly substantial technical barriers in one of the main LSE lecture theatres.
Further progress will be reported here of course!
Kris.
Screencasts
In the first presentation of the HigherEdBlogCon today, Mark Ott highlighted some of the inherent problems of lecture podcasts and explained how he trys to overcome them by ‘screencasting’.
The main problem with audio podcasts is that audio is not scannable – so while it’s useful for a student listening to the whole 50min lecture it’s no good for a student who is revising or reviewing material as it’s difficult to find a particular point in the lecture.
He uses screencasts – camtasia recordings of PowerPoint with audio – to overcome this. He also makes them shorter – lecture segments of 5-15mins covering 1 or 2 topics and he records them at ‘full speed’ i.e. no pauses that you would find in a real live lecture.
This is of course extra work but perhaps the output is more useful. At least from a reviwing / revising perspective.
Higher Education podcasting
It’s a podcasting day for me today… Now listening to a podcast on Moodle at OU higlighted on Auricle where Derek Morrison asks
Why aren’t you doing something like this? Why aren’t you out talking to and capturing the views and experiences of the innovators in your own organisations and then sharing them with the rest of us? Where’s the funding that will make this possible going to come from? Is this best left as a distributed activity involving just anyone who’s interested, or is there also scope for a major pump-priming initiative involving the major educational funding bodies/agencies?
Matt
Case Study: Podcasts as a Learning Tool in Economics
Following on from Jane’s recent post, I’ve been following a few links…
Some interesting findings: Case Study: Podcasts as a Learning Tool in Economics (Economics Network)
Similar comments about the need for short audio clips were made by Andy Ramsden in today’s sosig podcast on teaching
Matt
