Pros and Cons of Podcasting in Education
November 7, 2006
Podcasting has taken the world by storm and has emerged in the academic world as a powerful teaching tool. While some have taken the new technology and implemented it into their classroom, the majority of faculty have not yet utilized this new tool. Here at the Center we offer podcasting workshops focused on teaching and learning and also provide consultation on how to start your own podcast. However, with every new technological tool, a debate seems to develop on its effectiveness and how to utilize the tool properly. Below is a link from Nomadic Media providing both the positives and negatives of this newly adopted technology.
Click Here for Pros and Cons of Podcasting
Additional resources on podcasting can be found at the CTLT Podcasting Resource Page and in this article, “Teaching with Technology.”
Share your opinion and experiences by leaving a comment below:
How have you subscribed to a podcast? If so, which one and why? Haved you created a podcast before? Do you believe it can be used effectively as a teaching tool?
Entry Filed under: Uncategorized. Posted in Uncategorized Tags: Discussion-Join In, Podcasting, Teaching Tips, Tech Tips, Web 2.0 Tools, Workshop Extension.
Paul Cesarini | November 8th, 2006 at 6:40 am
I think podcasting, or in our case “coursecasting”, has a great deal of potential for both web-based and hybrid courses, and even for traditional face-to-face courses. This potential goes far beyond merely recording lectures, too, since many of us make a point of not lecturing our students.
Specifically, I’m growing increasingly interested in using this technology as means to convey supplementary course materials to students, in relatively small chunks, in a just-in-time manner. For example, if I get the same types of questions coming to me via email about an upcoming assignment, rather than reply identically to each individual student as they contact me about it, and rather than sending out a class-wide email, I think a brief podcast episode addressing these questions might be in order. This way the student can not only get the information they need, but they can also hear my tone, any aside comments I might have, and can do so without any additional effort on their part (assuming they’ve already subscribed to the coursecast at the beginning fo the semester). This information they need about the assignment is pushed at them, rather than them individually needing to pull it from me.
I also think this technology is ideal for interviews with subject matter experts, assuming of course they agree to have the interview episodically podcasted to the class or classes in question as needed. There’s just so much potential.
Of course, it’s probably all-too-easy to misuse this technology and turn it into some sort of bells & whistles, academic “white noise”. It’s all about the needs of the students, the content actually being delivered and the appropriateness of the technology to the context.