I listened today to a podcast about podcasting -- Podcasting in Education [MP3 23MB] -- given by Steve Sloan, San Jose State University. I found it on the Educause website. If you are still at the point of wondering what uses podcasting might have in education, I encourage you to listen. For example, Sloan mentions uses for distance learning, for self-paced learning, for remediation of slower learners.
July 2005 Archives
Podcasting has taken off and we are finding directories to help us find podcasts of interest. Sure there are a lot of podcasts that aren't worth our time to listen to. We said the same thing when the web first became an important communications, business and education medium. But there was then, and without question there are now, a universe of valuable sites.
With the new version of iTunes released in late June, it is easier than ever to podcatch. The iTunes music store is now featuring a directory of the top 100 podcasts. You can find podcasts on a wide range of topics, from politics to comedy, public radio to talk radio, and music to technology to sports. See one you like, click the subscribe button, and its RSS feed is added to your iTunes under the new Podcast folder.
I've added a new page to the LTC's Podcasting website to include directories of podcasts and a couple specific podcasts that can give students and instructors ideas of podcasts that could be done here. For instance, the idea that one finds in Virgin Atlantic's podcast audio guide for New York City, is an audio guide to campus' restaurants, museums, public art, the architecture of buildings in Tucson, or audio tours of Chicano mural art in Tucson. Lots of possibilities. Art Mobs has produced audio guides for MoMA, and made them available as podcasts. Couldn't students in art classes at the UA do audio guides to the UA Art Musuem?
Yesterday, I finished reading Geoffrey R. Stone's Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime from the Sedition Act of 1798 to the War on Terrorism. This is an important book to read and I recommend it to anyone interested in the history of free speech during wartime and/or is concerned about the events since 9.11 that relate to free speech. The book was interesting to me on many levels: as a history going back to the John Adams and the Federalists enacting the Sedition Act of 1798, re-visitin events of the Vietnam War era, and Stone's excellent final chapter on where we are now.
