Using Podcasting to Enhance Collaborative Learning in the Classroom

Pod Casting for Students

Pod casting facilitates instruction in many K-12 (and collegiate level) settings. Dlott (2007) demonstrated pod casting's efficacy in teaching geography, history and poetry writing. Pod casting allowed for the inclusion of music and sound effects in teaching descriptive language, writing styles and oral expression. Pod casting also facilitated students' efforts to test the sound of their voices in a non-threatening way, causing Dlott (2007) to consider it an appropriate tool to develop effective communicators. Dlott's efforts combined pod casting with other digital technology tied to the internet.

Social Knowing

In the chapter entitled "Social Knowing," we see that today students behave differently. Students are more socially involved in the sense that they are emailing each other, instant messaging (IM’ing) each other, studying together, etc... Knowing this makes me wonder if tests will be given to groups rather than to individuals. I agree with Weinberger’s statement, “increased emphasis on testing measurement is anti-social learning.” Students get turned off to so much testing. They are left feeling anxious, aggravated, and bored. All the testing leaves them with an “I don’t care” attitude, which is where we see a decline in grades. This should tell us that we need to get back to “Social Learning.”
Today kids IM each other and discuss their homework, but turn it in and get graded individually. If we know that they participate in these type activities, why don’t we work with them? Home schooling in theory permits this, though the social aspect may be difficult. Our jobs as educators and parents are to want to make children curious about the world. Taking core classes, even in good schools turns high school students off as the exams testing large classes chases away the appeal of interesting subjects. The web is more interesting than traditional media.
On behalf of disciplines: nobody thinks the world divides into categories and that's that, but there are distinctions that should be made. If you are studying science, you need to know that it differs from economics. It's not that everything is chaotic, but that we are able to find what the ways of organizing and clustering are that make sense without being stuck with decisions made by experts for us that are meant to apply in all cases.

Social Learning

As an Educator, wouldn't you know that I would pick up on the part of "Everything is Miscellaneous" that speaks of anything educational.

Weinberger discusses “Social Knowers,” and he describes the typical Massachusetts classroom at the end of the year where students are taking standardized tests. The following paragraphs are an exerpt from "Everything is Miscellaneous."

The implicit lesson is unmistakable: Knowing is something done by individuals. It is something that happens inside of your brain. The mark of knowing is being able to fill in a paper with the right answers. Knowledge could not get any less social. In fact, in those circumstances when knowledge is social we call it cheating.

Nor could the disconnect get much wider between the official state view of education and how our children are learning. In most American households, the computer on which students do their homework is likely to be connected to the Net. Even if their teachers let them use only approved sources on the Web, chances are good that any particular student, including your son or daughter, has four or five instant messaging sessions open as he or she does homework. They have their friends with them as they learn…

One thing is for sure: When our kids become teachers, they’re not going to be administering tests to students sitting in a neat grid of separated desks with the shades down.

The last paragraph really moved me. I thouhgt, "FINALLY, someone is thinking exactly what I'm thinking....and not only that, they're actually writing it down for others to see." It frustrates me to no end with all the testing and assessing that is going on inside our classrooms these days. It brings me comfort in knowing that when my nieces and nephews become professionals, they will not be required to give all this testing and progress monitor. That makes me really happy.

How to Add a Podcast Badge to Your Blogger Blog Post | eHow.com

How to Add a Podcast Badge to Your Blogger Blog Post | eHow.com

How to Publish Your Podcast on Blogger

How to Publish Your Podcast on Blogger.com

A Fun Read

What a fun book. The main idea of the book is that digital information can be organized in fundamentally different ways than previous information formats. Basically, before, with what Weinberger calls 1st and 2nd order organization, everything in an organizational structure can only exist in one place, a book can only have one Dewey Decimal Number, an animal can have only one place in a taxonomy. This is a limitation of physical media. A book could perhaps be about five different things, but you can only put it on the shelf in one particular place. With the digital medium, however, information can be categorized more comprehensively. Tagging is the best example of this: you can "categorize" something an indefinite number of times just by affixing tags to it that others can search for. The searching process calls up everything within a category without it having to be stored in a particular category order.

This book said a lot of the things I've been wanting to hear. There is a lot of potential in this type of thinking that has not really been explored. Moreover, it was a fun read- very entertainingly written, with examples made from most of the interesting websites I could think of. A fun an interesting look at digital organization, or, if you want to look at it that way, and interesting tour through the more innovative corners of the internet.

I'm Impressed with "Everything is Miscellaneous!"

I am very impressed with the thinking of David Weinberger. I love his new book, "Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder." David really helped me to think and the book left my head reeling.

David mentions something I’ve heard in several presentations lately. He mentions that the more “mess” you have the more valuable the data becomes. For example, if you have a tool like Flickr that stores information from every picture we upload, results can be clustered in ways that are impossible in the first order world (the physical world).

Throughout the book, Weinberger uses Wikipedia as an example of how the third order of order has been successful. On page 208 he makes a great point:

The Britannica includes references at the end of articles to remind us that topics are related to other topics, literally afterthoughts. Wikipedia, on the other hand, is besotted with links…These links are not even bread crumbs, for with two clicks we well may be going down a path no one has trod before and that no one anticipated…In the miscellaneous order, a topic is anything someone somewhere is interested in. Anyone an pull a topic together by contributing to Wikipedia, writing a blog post, creating a playlist, or starting a discussion thread.

While researchers question the accuracy of Wikipedia (and rightly so) it cannot be dismissed as a powerful research tool. I enjoy researching on Wikipedia and following the links to find additional information. As an educator, I have introduced this tool to my students. They are very familiar with Wikipedia. However, I have taught them to research the topic further using additional tools to confirm accuracy – but if I hadn’t used Wikipedia in the first place I may not have ended up down the path I did.

I appreciated how Weinberger commented on the future of the ebook. He mentions how we could collect data from how people read books, the passages they highlight, where people read books and so much more using wireless enabled ebook readers (p.222) – and while it sounds like science fiction – we’re almost there. Kindle has the power of wireless technology – meaning that in theory, Amazon could connect to our readers and collect data. W hile this sounds scary and like a huge invasion of privacy – imagine the power that this data could provide. Some examples Weinberger has is that you could create a list of books that people most often read at the beach or a list of books people stopped reading halfway through – how cool would that be?

So, like I said at the beginning – my head is reeling with information and I’ll probably have to read this book again to get a real hold on some of the theory involved, but I loved the book! I think it’s a great read for anyone interested in learning more about the new digital order.