Overview
An investigation in the use of rich media (definition?) for learning.
- How does it change traditional learning environment (eg. the classroom) and person to person interactions (student-student, teacher-student) ?
- What kinds of rich media are best suited for collaboration or individualized learning?
- What are the educational benefits or drawbacks for production and reception of rich media learning?
(tentative new version: 1. what are examples of rich media and how do they influence learning?
2. what are examples of handheld knowledge media and how do they influence learning?
3. what are the relationships between rich media and handhelds and how do they interplay in learning?
One unique property of handheld device is its ubiquitous usage, i.e. not restricted to a certain place/time. How does this change the behavior of people's learning? The most straightforward/old way of handheld device learning is listening to audio books. People can do this everywhere, how is this different from sitting in a dedicated environment to do learning?
Questions arising from discussion....
rich-media consumption? consumption? problematic term?
What does "pedagogically effective ways" mean?
What is the model of knowledge development that would lend itself to the use of handhelds and rich media for the purpose of learning?
What would the unintended effects be?
What would the intended effects be?
What else can be identified as rich media?
What is the relationship between rich media and handhelds?
Does podcasting have to be live? how does the learning experience change if it is a recording?
Proximity
Content and relationship
Synchronous or Asynchronous communication (define terms?)
Is the the podcast experience transmissive? what boundaries does it have?
Interchangeable nature of the terms learning and experience?
ALTERING THE FOCUS:
At this point i would like to suggest that this theme be altered slightly to focus more specifically on the issue of hand held devices. I offer this suggestion in light of my recent experience reading M. MacLuhan's Understanding Media, The Extensions of Man, in which he examines the relationship between "media" and existence. The connection for this theme being an interest in the ways that hand held devices serve as extensions of our "connected" selves.
Oct 7th: Another thought....
Perhaps it would be beneficial to also/either look at the idea of authorship on the internet. Incorporating different types of authorship including blogging, video podcasts, audio podcasts etc. This could lend itself to an exploration of how individuals project their image, ideas or even themselves into the virtual world and the relationships that develop from this participation. (Would this be too broad?)
If we were able to refine this idea we might also be able to incorporate a discussion on facebook & youtube and the idea of using it as a tool to represent where one is or how they are feeling in their lives (i.e. daily updates, the mood icon etc.) This might take the focus away from handhelds completely although i'm curious to see if this has any appeal in terms of an idea....
Re: Another thought
I like this idea. We could focus on how people build and maintain their personal images on the internet, and Facebook could be an example of it for our implementation. This could be an interesting contrast to the themes we already went over in the class (wiki, tagging...), in which there's little impact of personal image. People have already started to refer to blogs they trust as a knowledge resource, so this has a role in learning as well. We could also discuss how people gained credibility on the internet and how that influences the way their knowledge is used by the public.
I actually don't mind changing our topic from handhelds to this - it looks more clear-defined to me, and we can come up with more realistic activities for the class.
Pedagogical Goals
We picked the topic with noticing there were increasing audio or video Podcasting websites showing up on the Internet. At the same time, the market provided diverse digital devices with enhanced feature to meet the trend of rich-media consumption. However it's always been challenged to take advantage of the emerging technologies in education. The class was designed to give audience an exposure to the history and technology background of Podcasting and also the applications in education we have found. Then let people brainstorm its potentials and challenges. For the purpose to create a wider space in discussion, we expanded the topic to use handhelds in learning (no just for Podcasting).
The following questions were given to help thinking:
- How can we use rich media objects and handheld devices in pedagogically effective ways? Student centered learning, driving questions, etc.?
- What kind of learning environments would be best for these rich media objects? What are some opportunities? Challenges?
- What kind of search indices and interfaces can we imagine? metadata? Geographic (Google Earth), etc.
- How can the production of rich media be helpful for learning? (E.g., a portfolio product, like a plant cycle, with snippets of video for each portion of the cycle). Or to capture things that happen at different locations but at the same time, or a record of people, animals, history.
The following goals were what we would like to see:
- Get general sense of what is Podcasting and how it has been used in education so far.
- Understand the valuable implications of Podcasting to education.
- Engage in finding out different forms of learning with rich media and the pedagogically effective ways to use them and handhelds in education.
References and Resources
Paper:
- Soloway, E., & Norris, C. (2004). Envisioning the handheld-centric classroom. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 30 (4), 281-294
- Vess, D. (2006) "History to Go: Why iTeach with iPods." The History Teacher Vol. 39, No. 4 (August 2006).
Sample Podcasting Websites:
- Channel 9
is a Microsoft discussion forum used to promote conversations among Microsoft's customers. It features interviews with Microsoft developers about their products.
- Our City Podcast is a podcasting site for kids and by kids. Students from around the globe are invited to submit a recording all about the city they live in.
- K-5 reading curriculum podcasting idea can be found here.
Other recources:
- iTunes - "The newest version of iTunes (6.0) has a built-in podcast directory. After launching iTunes, click the Podcasts icon in the Source panel. The categories are listed on the bottom-left of the screen.You can also perform a search. iTunes is free software for Windows and Macintosh."
- The Education Podcast Network - "The Education Podcast Network is an effort to bring together into one place, the wide range of podcast programming that may be helpful to teachers looking for content to teach with and about, and to explore issues of teaching and learning in the 21st century."
- Learn Out Loud - "A complete selection of audio and video learning material - aiming to assemble the most comprehensive catalog of audio and video learning material on the Web."
- Podcast Alley - "The best place to find all information relating to podcasts and podcasting. We are striving to develop the biggest and best directory of podcasts available on the internet. Podcasting is a great way for professionals and individuals alike to create audio news files (podcasts) that people can download to their iPods and listen to when they are away from their computers."
- Podcast directory and search engine:
http://www.ipodder.org/
http://www.masternewmedia.org/news/2005/05/20/where_to_submit_your_podcasts.htm
http://www.podzinger.com/
Implementations
