Andrew Middleton :: Blog

http://podcasting-for-lta.blogspot.com/2008/03/death-by-screencast-or-towards-

I probably ought to post this on our creativity blog but I think this has a strong connection to my views on educational podcasting.
I've been on my PowerPoint fast for over a year - use anything, but don't use PowerPoint, see what changes... Nothing against PowerPoint per se, just I know what I do (and I know what others do) as soon as PowerPoint starts up. It is such a usable interface that it doesn't challenge you to chisel away at your ideas - it is very much about presenting ideas in a clear, structured way. PowerPoint is a fantastic planning tool, but the trouble is you start planning and, before you know it, you've turned up to do your session and you're projecting your plans and your script on the wall for all to see. How weird!
By the way, not only is PowerPoint a great planning tool, for podcasters PowerPoint is specifically a great storyboarding or outlining tool around which conversations can be driven.
Well the fast is working - I've used various technologies to enhance the sessions I run at conferences for staff development. And I've run sessions where there has been no need for the planned use of digital technology. My sessions tend to involve other people's voices as much as my own, even where I've been presenting a paper. That's no big deal, but for me it helps me to work on engagement.
I've been submitting several abstracts for conference papers recently and several of the educational conferences I am submitting to ask presenters to submit their PowerPoints beforehand! What? Why?!! Shouldn't conference organisers (and some are) be promoting more interactivity in their session. OK, PP doesn't have to mean death - but it certainly helps!
So, you've heard of Death by PowerPoint:

• bullet
• point
• after
• bullet
• point
• read
• by
• the
• presenter
• in
• a monotone

What can be worse?..

Death by screencast. (I've seen this so many times but inspired by seeing an example here yesterday.) It's the same problem, captured and glorified. And what can be worse than that? Death by Screencast+ (with captioning "because we have to comply with accessibility legislation" - captioning bullet points - why? Something is wrong here.). OMG. Give me a hanky.

Let's not go into the creative use of PowerPoint - there are fantastic ways of using it (eg as a game platform). But let's consider:

New Technologies, new opportunities and creative attitudes

Take Camtasia Studio as a starting pointing - we can capture the screen and add a narrative. We can annotate this. Zoom in and hightlight parts of what we see. Once you've got your mic connected just hit the red button. That's the technology.

So why, with such an accessible and versatile tool, would you consider capturing just one voice and just one screen? Anyone heard of Windows? Anyone heard of conversation? Why does it have to be more than 30 seconds long?

With this technology we could be discussing pictures, diagrams, telling stories, giving feedback on assignments, setting challenges and puzzles, commenting on dynamic data coming in, discussing technology supported reflective practice,...

And we could be distributing these student and staff generated media interventions through a podcast feed. (I knew I was on the right blog).

http://podcasting-for-lta.blogspot.com/2008/02/production-values-keep-it-lofi.

I may have written something similar before so excuse me if I am repeating myself. One of the most exciting things about educational podcasting is that anyone can do it. They may not know it, but I know it - anyone in HE can podcast. They have access to the technology and the technology is simple. OK, for those who haven't tried it the barrier may seem insurmountable, but for those who have, the main challenge quickly becomes how they are going to use it rather than how it should be made.
So it was slightly bizarre to be jolted into a reality that I have not had on my own horizon for a long time. I heard a professional educational podcasting consultant from the US being interviewed on an ed tech podcast that comes out of a US HE institution. In this interview the consultant said that he knew production value is important because if you listen to the top 100 podcasts in iTunes the audio quality and production values are high on all of them.
If podcasting has potential in education it is because of its ease of production. This offers accessibility therefore to any would-be producer, whether they are staff or student. Furthermore, as with blogging and other Read/Write Web activities, one of the beauties of podcasting is that it lives at the thinnest tip of the 'long tail' - it is an activity that is economic to extreme niches!
If you are looking for valuable and effective educational podcasting I suggest you don't look in the top 100 of iTunes where production has been designed to engage the masses. Instead seek recommendations or use your academic search skills to unearth the obscure podcasts recorded using hand-held recorders in the corner of a shared office after hours and instantly released.
Forget high production values. Do what you can to get it sounding OK, but above all just hit record and capture and immediately share what is important.

http://podcasting-for-lta.blogspot.com/2008/06/new-posting-time-flies.html

I've just posted a recording from the Blended Learning Conference session I did on audio feeback models. This is the first episode that I've posted since March! I knew it was a while and I'm not unduely concerned as the podcasting project that drove the previous 60 episodes or so is long finished, however it did surprise me. My intention has been to keep the podcasts coming, but without the need to adhere to the schedule that I had established during the project - about one every two weeks.
The lesson here, for me, is: unless you keep to a schedule of some sort, and plan ahead, it's not really going to happen. It should also be noted that I am publishing several other podcasts including a personal one on walking the Pennine Way, one for the pilot I am running at work, and I am contributing to the Podcasting for Pedagogic Purposes podcast too (ie I'm not being idle!).
My first love is the LTA podcast however, so I think I will reinvigorate this and plan to do 1 every two weeks from September onwards. We'll see.
The latest episode is a bit of a disappointment in that it is mostly a recording of me spouting on about audio feedback (some great ideas, honest), though the last 10 minutes do capture other people's ideas. I hope these are audible enough.

http://podcasting-for-lta.blogspot.com/2008/06/100-great-ideas-for-educational

If you haven't taken a look at the PPP wiki here's the link: http://podcastingforpp.pbwiki.com/
This special interest group has taken up quite a lot of my spare capacity (joke) recently and is a very interesting initiative in my view.
The main challenge faced by the SIG is its sustainability as the initial HEA Pathfinder pump priming runs out. My main response to this dilema came in two sessions I ran at the third SIG meeting: one that discussed Communities of Practice and Hub and Spoke models that kicked off the day with Alan Hilliard from the Uni of Herts and then a session called '100 Great Ideas for Educational Podcasting - the book!"
For me a SIG is a group with a shared special interest (well that is more or less the words from SIG in a slighly different order). But it's important to spell it out because I believe that for the SIG to be sustainable it needs to recognise its capacity in the numbers of people who have expressed their interest - about 140 who have made some commitment to PPP so far and about 70 who turned up to SIG3. Well if you just take the 70 who turned up to the one hour session I ran in the afternoon that's 70 hours worth of work - how much would that cost? All those people generated several ideas each for the book. Well over 100 ideas and, perhaps most importantly, an understanding amongst all who took part that educational podcasting can be so much more than idea number 1 (podcasting lectures). Indeed, I said that that idea was too old hat to submit, so we'll see what we have got. I've been carrying the slips of paper around in my rucksack all week and have not dared to open them given my other commitments. But I can't wait! If I hadn't felt the urge to share this with you I'd be hammering away at the keys getting ready for the next stage in the process which will be network review (like peer review, but involving the whole SIG network through a wiki). In the meantime there's a lot of reading and typing to be done.
So how does the book relate to sustainability of the SIG? Well, despite the promo for the event, this book won't just be written in one hour. This is going to take ongoing engagement from all contributors over the next few months. So I think we can bridge from this funded start on into the future.
We have another Steering Group meeting coming up in early July. I guess we'll be reviewing ideas for next steps there. One of the next steps will be a stall at ALT-C in September. I would like to think we can drum up a lot of ideas for the stall that will make it a high profile centre of gravity at the conference. I see podcasting as being very active educationally and I think it will be great to be able to demonstrate that to all ALT-ers. I keep saying 'flash mob' and 'bar camp' in the steering group meetings and I think others see it this way too. Podcasting does seem to attract its share of mavericks, or at least people who think outside of the box. Very exciting...

http://podcasting-for-lta.blogspot.com/2008/02/iphone-u.html

Apple have announced iPhone U - I suppose it had to happen. All of a sudden we see the potential to make the shift from delivering knowledge to engaging with it socially. (Strange, this article does still talk about getting class presentations on your device... oh well).
They're running a Duke type initiative with students being handed iPhones and iTouches.

http://podcasting-for-lta.blogspot.com/2008/02/losing-ownership-of-your-record

Losing ownership of your podcast recording is a topic that I don't think I have particularly thought about. This came up twice yesterday in the Podcasting for Pedagogic Purposes event. Andy Ramsden reminded me than some lecturers draw upon evidence from their own research in progress and therefore may be constrained in using that evidence publicly.
The second mention was from an interesting presentation by Stephen Gomez from the University of the west of England. In fact he made several points that I have not come across before - he mentions that once a podcast is distributed the author loses control over the media - it can be share and proliferated without their knowledge. In the spirit of open content I see this as a non-issue, but I recognise that this is very important to some people. He made an interesting analogy relating to tracking: when he asked his students who had used his podcasts many more hands went up than the system tracking records showed. He took this to mean that some students were downloading the podcast files and distributing them to the friends, just as in a lecture some students will ask for 5 copies of the lecture notes so they can share them out with their friends. (My, perhaps cynical, assumption was that the students said they had listened because they didn't want to be pulled up for not listening).
He has developed a system now that streams his chunked media objects and allows users to create playlists within the web-based tool, and if I remember correctly, they can comment on and rate the media too (a la YouTube) - but the media objects are streamed and not downloadable.
I wrote my Masters dissertation on digital media learning objects so I really like the idea of these short bits of 'content' (and I think this can be quite varied in his own teaching). I like the idea of the rating and commenting too. I would love to see an example of his web app being populated by students - in our student generated media work the idea of the collective knowledge pool is never far away and this web app might facilitate such an approach. As I say, I don't get the concern over closed content though, so I would go with downloadable and take away content.

http://podcasting-for-lta.blogspot.com/2008/02/podcasting-for-pedagogic-purpos

I attended this meeting in Chester organised by the University of Chester with the University of Hertfordshire and funded by the HEA. In December 06 myself and a number of other people tried something similar, so it will be interesting to see if the funding helps or hinders this attempt to establish a UK FE/HE podcasting network and Special Interest Group. The good news was that several faces from our aborted attempt turned up for this and it was good to see them and other familiar faces. There was a big turn out and I gather there was further interest.
I still believe a UK network can be really useful. Podcasting is odd: there's a little but significant technology hurdle and a wide landcape beyond that to experiment with new learning tools. However, the hurdle always seems to obscure the wide landscape so most people struggle to imagine what can be done beyond recording the lecture. I was reminded of this again today, yet there was a healthy number of people (tagged 'experts' bizarrely for the day) who had started to explore the landscape.
Robin Johnson of Manc Met proposed such a network could generate case studies and I totally agree. The activity results in usable products and provides a good opportunity for learning together. The things that inspire 'the novices' at SHU are case studies or the models I post to our pilot site. Such things really clarify what exists beyond the hurdle (I'm loathed to call it a barrier - it is usually quite possible for people to get over it once they have an exigency to do so).
I ended up speaking so much yesterday. I hate this, it's my worst trait, but a lot of the comments and questions I heard really didn't seem useful so I found myself suggesting things that hopefully will help people avoid some of the pit falls that I have dealt with over the last few years as noted in this blog. Again, I had moments of self-doubt and courage when the 'experts' break out group were asked to feed back. It was so obviously an opportunity to demonstrate how podcasting can be used to facilitate conversation (rather than to just deliver knowledge), so I jumped up and did one of my spontaneous 'let's make a podcast' workshop exercises. This is a useful model for any classroom where the presence of the recorder promotes an intense and focussed summary of learning. The expert group ironically had been the only group of the four not to have made a summary recording of their break out in the break out session itself. Hopefully I demonstrated some of the main points: podcasting works best when multiple voices are involved (I ran round the room seeking out the expert group members to comment on the headline points), it is accessible (recorder was ready and primed in my bag), it focusses the minds of those taking part (the experts were surprising calm and ready to take part when put on the spot because the discussion had been prepared in the break out, easy and accessible (just press the red button!), short (it only needs to be short because the detail was better captured on a flip chart and the learning happens in the minds of those present and taking part not in the delivered information), etc, etc.
Otherwise the rest of the day was either weirder or more normal (whatever your perspective). there were a couple of good presentations including one by an academic who is chunking his teaching into streamed media objects. I must find out more as this resonates with an approach called Audio Notes I developed with a colleague in Engineering a couple of years ago - but this is much more sophisticated.
I hate discussions that get caught up on the semantics and when someone said, "Shouldn't we agree on what we mean by podcasting?" my heart sank. But they were dead right. Podcasting is just a technology. Why would we want a network to discuss a technology? So why was it of interest to people here, and what did they think 'podcasting' meant? There was one (very good) presentation on audio feedback by Derek France - but audio feedback is not podcasting in the full sense, ie including the subscription method of distribution, serialisation, etc. But because audio as a learning media is new to many people 'podcasting' is often used to describe anything involving digital audio. There was a surprising amount of talk about video too, so digital video is encompassed in that catch all word for many people too. That's OK, but when you need to discuss the technology and/or the pedagogy there needs to be a shared understanding. Educational podcasting (Podcasting for a Pedagogic Purpose?) is too complex an area to allow for misconception through imprecision. It was suggested a steering group produce some terms of reference.
It was good to meet Alan Carr (Mid-Cheshire College and Dark Horse Radio) as I have subscribed to his music podcast for some time. I've also heard him on One Minute Howto discussing how to avoid death by Powerpoint - one of my own hobby horses. And his blog features pictures of Anthony Gormley's Crosby Beach artwork - a favourite topic of mine.
The student voice is so important to understanding the potential of digital media and podcasting. We need to understand who 'owns' this and who wants it, and whether 'it' means subscription, monologues, making the stuff, etc, etc. I hope the group manages to involve students in its thinking - and this may require HEA money. I do mean 'involve', not just 'ask'.
(On the otherhand, I also have an idea that I don't think I've blogged in depth yet, that Educational Podcasting needn't be seen as belonging to technologists, students, the future, or anything in particular in order for education to become interested in it. If it has an educational use, then Education must shape it to suit our aspirations (if not needs) and learn to call it its own. We must quickly connect podcasting to the progressive pedagogies we understand. In other words, it doesn't matter whether the students use it or not - does it provide a valid channel for what we shouild be doing in Education?
I think the idea of a network that carries out joint research is useful - What models can we devise? How do they integrate into the curriculum? How does the curriculum change because of this? What models work? etc
The next event is at the University of Hertfordshire in April. I think we're going to get a chance to determine the agenda through a wiki, but I hope it is mostly going to be about working together to devise case studies and models and to peer review them perhaps. If each person turns up with a recording of a conversation with a student from their place this group could in one fell swoop generate more data on the student perception of podcasting than has been done so far. With 40 people attending this group can achieve a lot quickly - collaborative case study (or scenario, or model) generation looks good too.
Andy Ramsden, now at Bath, was Twittering this on his mobile - I just had too much to say. I'd like to see his Twitter feed but can't find it. And Graham McElearn at Sheffield suggested doing an ALT workshop together - I think that would be really useful.

http://podcasting-for-lta.blogspot.com/2008/02/lecture-casting.html

Here's an interesting post (http://edtechatouille.blogspot.com/2008/02/lecture-capture-for-masses-with.html) about lecture casting with Camptasia Relay from Technsmith. I use Camptasia for screencasting so it's interesting to hear how they're developing it.
I'll have to take a look at this as soon as it becomes available, not of course because I am at all interested in lecture casting, but because I am interested in usability that allows anyone to capture and post little learning moments. This sounds cute but it fits in potentially with some of my ongoing bandwagons - user production, and small scale media interventions rather than didactic, passive media spouting.
One comment at the beginning of the post echoes something that I've mentioned here before - the ability to control the speed of playback. I do a fair amount of research interviews and playing them back at 1.5 speed can be just as effective as slowly playing them back. In Windows Media Player this can be done by selecting Now Playing > Show Enhancments.

http://podcasting-for-lta.blogspot.com/2008/11/alt-c-arg.html

I have written a piece for the ALT Newsletter entitled ARG @ ALT-C x PPP SIG available at:
http://newsletter.alt.ac.uk/e_article001230547.cfm?x=b11,0,w
It describes how I ran an alternate reality game at this year's ALT-C conference to engage delegates in the Podcasting for Pedagogic Purposes SIG.

http://podcasting-for-lta.blogspot.com/2008/11/performing-academic-work.html

I am very slowly working through 170 ideas for educational podcasting that have been submitted through an activity I ran for the Podcasting for Pedagogic Purposes Special Interest Group. Part of the idea generation activity I designed was based upon people responding to each other's ideas in finding new approaches - ideas breed ideas in other words.
Now that I am reviewing all of these even more ideas are ocurring to me. And I hope as others come into the wiki to help with the review process, more ideas will ocurr to them too.
Someone had suggested using podcasting as a platform for student submitted poetry. This is probably quite an obvious, and very useful, idea for using podcasting in an educational context if you are a poetry teacher. But my interest in reviewing the submitted ideas is in asking, how can the specific suggestions be applied to other contexts? In this case it raised an idea that I thought I would share here:

It makes me wonder whether we can look at audio as a way to perform academic work, and whether there might be value in doing that. If academia is so much about reading and writing, what happens when a student is asked to read their work aloud? What can be learnt by reading aloud, for other people, what you have written? Reading scripts is difficult if you wish to keep your audience engaged, so what happens to the quality of academic writing, therefore, if you are asked to write to heighten the work's readability? It must affect the work, but how? I normally review my own writing many times before submiting it. I don't tend to read it aloud in this process. It's not just reading it aloud that's got me interested, it's reading it aloud in a convincing way. Acting it almost. Audio provides a way of mediating such an activity - my question is 'does reading aloud improve learning?'

If you would like to contribute to the review of these ideas, and suggest your own, please contact me by leaving a comment here.