Podcasting for Educators

In Annette Lamb & Larry Johnson's articles about podcasting--"Podcasting in the School Library, Part 1 & 2" (Teacher Librarian 34:3 February and April 2007), the authors note that pocasting--(a combo of ipod and broadcasting) is a great way to offer multimedia learning for students. In Part 1, the they state, "Podcasts are a way to convey ideas and emotions that are difficult to express in a text format." What I liked most about this article was the incredible resources for educational podcasts which were listed included:
Education Podcast Network
http://epnweb.org
Podcast Directory for Educators
http://recap.ltd.uk/podcasting
Podzinger
www.podzinger.com
and more!

The authors ask interesting and relevant questions including:
"What is the vaue of the audio medium? How does the Podcast fit with other learning resources? My family and I often listen to podcasts from NPR www.npr.org/podcasts and Studio 360 (http://perec.studio360.org/podcast.html) while traveling in a car and not only is there some topic for everyone--but, it's a great way to get new information while multi-tasking with other things like driving, playing games, knitting, etc.

In Part 2, "Creating Powerful Podcasts with Your Students," the authors state, "...instead of spending time confiscating MP3 players from students, [teachers can] integrate learning by involving students in scripting, recording, editing and sharing Podcasts..." Some tips to consider while creating a podcast are to: work in teams, write a script, check for copyright issues, select a good location for your podcast, choose a microphone, add sound effects and most importantly, select the right software. You can use GarageBand or the opensource software Audacity which is free. Podcasts can aso include pictures, video and animations.

Race to Nowhere--education documentary

Race to Nowhere (www.racetonowhere.com) is a new educational documentary by parent Vicki Abeles focusing on the overly competitive educational system which has been created for high schoolers in the US. Many of today's students who are overworked by homework, extracurricular activities, rehearsals, varsity sports and more are suffering from depression, headaches, stomach aches, anorexia and anxiety. As the creator and director of the film states, "We want the best for our kids"--watching kids today and the stress they are under led this parent to document and then challenge current paradigms for education.

There were many distinguished educators and psychologists in the film emphasizing the point that in today's society we are asking students to perform at a much higher level than in the past. Sarah Bennett, author of Stop Homework noted that in her research--homework does not make kids smarter. Apparently, there is no correlation between academic achievement and homework. Dr. Deborah Stipek from the SOE at Stanford University noted that there is no equity in schools and kids in low-income schools do not get the resources that other kids in high-income schools get such as tutoring for ACT/SAT, computers, summer opportunities, etc. Dr Denise Pope, another Stanford education professor and author (Doing School: How We Are Creating a Generation of Stressed-Out, Materialistic, and Miseducated Students) noted that the implication of tutoring says to the student--you can't do it alone, we need to help you. This lends itself to the culture of "perform and then produce" and leaves out the all-important step of processing. Many of the educators noted that "smart" has many different meanings.

Due to the 2002 No Child Left Behind laws, we now have students drowning in content and tests. Unfortunately in the US, success is measured by how much money you make v how happy you are. What does it mean to be successful for kids?

How do we get kids to love learning? Learning is power. We need to raise critical thinkers and problem solvers. The point of education is to learn, not to memorize facts. The documentary asks: What type of individuals are we trying to create for our society? What does it take to produce a happy, motivated and creative human being?

Talking About Technology to Teacher-Candidates in the SOE at Pace

This week I did a 30 minutes presentation in one of my Professor's classes in the SOE at Pace University. Professor Kathryn De Lawter, an Assistant Professor in the SOE at Pace has been using Ipads in her educational pedagogy class via a Verizon grant and I came into her class, at her request, to talk to future teachers about learning and technology. I started with some anecdotal stories from my own family, kids and students I work with and talked about how I have watched technology push individuals to learn in new ways. I introduced some great sites like: comiclife, wordle, glogster, xtranormal, dipity and more to get them to see that students want to be engaged and want to create. I told them to join twitter---only one student out of 30 was on twitter because it is the best Personal Learning Network out there.

There was one student in particular who really despised the idea of using technology. She called me out when I used terms like--"this program is really easy--it's just drag and drop" and said--why is drag and drop important for students to learn? What does it teach them? I love a good challenge and what ensued was a heated discussion around her views as an anti-technology person and mine as a technology educator. In the end, I'm not sure I convinced her to even try using anything technology-related in the classroom. What made me ultimately sad was that she is an example of so many of the teachers out there who basically are not--going with the flow in contemporary society. Change is good--and for an educator to be completed closed off to change is quite unfortunate. How do we get teachers to try using technology in the classroom? I haven't figured this one out yet--but, I know that my own passion for technology will remain and grow.