Podcasts

Assignment: Create 3 brief “podcast” episodes for teachers inspired by specific chapters in the course textbook, The World is Open (Bonk). (View original blog post here: http://darcyhutchings.com/ed-431-assignment-podcasts/)

My podcast episodes are part of an ongoing series I made up called Tech Ed Tidbit. With the motto, “Helping you teach better with technology,” the series highlights various aspects of technology in education to help busy teachers learn more with very little time commitment. I envision each episode being supplemented on the Tech Ed Tidbit website with a resource list for further reading and exploration if an instructor wishes to pursue a topic further. While the information is relevant to teachers at all levels, I specifically had in mind an audience of college-level course instructors.

Transcript for all episodes (with references).

I created these episodes using Audacity, a free audio-recording and editing program. This was my second experience using the software and my first experience working with multiple tracks to include music and a sound bite. The piece I had previously created in my ED 653 Instructional Design course, linked here, was a simple voice recording. I really enjoyed making the podcasts for this class — everything from my little robotic intro to looking for ways to inject my personality and make them engaging. The one thing I did not enjoy was being sick when I needed to do the recordings. I had to do extra takes and editing because I kept getting hoarse or coughing mid-way through. I’m quite pleased that you can’t obviously hear my sickness in my recorded audio.

I can see using audio recordings for the purpose of providing brief lectures or directions in an online course. I would provide a transcript of the audio recordings for individuals with a disability or who learn better from reading than listening. For those who enjoy it, I like the idea of providing the audio option so that they have some variety in content delivery. I have received compliments on my ability to make my voice sound engaging in recordings, so hopefully some students would find them more pleasant than reading text. I am also quite fond of delivering content via screen-cast video. For lectures that benefit from dynamic or multiple visuals, that remains the best option. However, sometimes you just need to convey information that either does not require a visual or that requires just a single static visual. Audio requires less bandwidth than video, making it easier to access where people have bandwidth issues, such as many locations in rural Alaska.

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