Exploring Presentation Tools in the Read/Write Web

First Impressions

Photo by pmtorrone via Flickr

Choosing the right presentation tool for your purposes these days can be an overwhelming task.  As a child, I created dioramas, maps, book jackets, puppet plays and of, course, the pervasive "poster" to demonstrate my learning in school.  Now, as a teacher, my students create (among other things) dioramas, maps, book jackets, puppet plays and of course, posters to show me what they have learned about a topic.  Surprise, surprise though: the Read/Write web and the world of Web 2.0 is changing this too!  The amount of tools at our fingertips (for free!) is multiplying every day.  If the tool shown above represents the past, today's Swiss Army knife of presentation and multimedia tools would have thousands of doodads coming out of it... good luck fitting that in your pocket!  The mere thought of all these fascinating possibilities makes me a little bit dizzy (motion sickness from my journey perhaps?) so I've decided to start slow.  This week I will be exploring three tools: Prezi, Voicethread and Bitstrips (any more than that and I feel that I may be needed that corkscrew!).  As I went through the process of learning, researching and practicing with these tools I kept a few basic questions in mind for each:

• What is it?
• How does it work?
• How do I see myself using it - both in the classroom and personally or professionally?
• What are the positive and negative features of the tool?

I chose these tools because they were ones that I have never worked with.  I have done quite a bit of work with some of the other tools that were mentioned as options this week: Glogster and Animoto are two definite favourites I've used in the past.  

Prezi

The first tool I decided to explore this week was a presentation tool called Prezi.   According to Wikipedia, Prezi is “a web-based presentation application and storytelling tool that uses a single canvas instead of traditional slides. Text, images, videos and other presentation objects are placed on the infinite canvas and grouped together in frames. The canvas allows users to create non-linear presentations, where users can zoom in and out of a visual map.”  I have attended a couple of presentations where this tool has been used and I was intrigued at the idea of learning more about Prezi

Of course, the underlying issue I was trying to uncover in my exploration is the advantage of using Prezi over the traditional PowerPoint that has been the staple of classrooms, keynote theatres and lecture halls everywhere for the last fifteen years.  My attitude towards PowerPoint is lukewarm, but I believe most of these ambivalent feelings come from experiencing so many poorly put together presentations (you certainly can’t blame the hammer for inflicting injury upon your thumb if you bang it onto your hand – so it follows that the tool is not to be blamed fully for the pain it is possible of inflicting).   I think that no matter which tool you are using, whether for personal or classroom use, learning effective presentation strategies and techniques is a mandatory prerequisite.

Andertoons Business Cartoons

Upon signing up for a free educators account on Prezi I took the short amount of time required to view the three most basic tutorials.  The first Prezi I watched was a powerful one that highlights just exactly what makes Prezi unique from the presentation tools of the past and focuses in on how it can be used in education effectively:

Thoughts on using Prezi as a teaching tool on Prezi

I have been to a few presentations recently where the presenter has used Prezi and, I must admit, I find it a little "zoomy", but after viewing the above Prezi, my interest in the tool for classroom use was officially piqued and I was encouraged to give it a try.  I clicked on "start a new prezi" and I was on my way!  After giving my project a title and brief description, I had a blank canvas to work from with three key features to become familiar with:

You can click anywhere on you Prezi canvas to add text, images or video.  Inspired by a feature I had seen on the previous Prezi (little tiny words above huge words to zoom in on), I decided to create a review lesson on nouns, verbs and adjectives to use with my students on the SMARTboard.  I think that if my students were to become familiar with how a Prezi works they could even use it as an independent centre while I'm teaching guided reading in small groups.  I found the process of using the tools fairly easy although the zooming feature took a little bit to get used to. I also struggled with how to organize my lesson.  With such a huge, blank canvas I had difficulty deciding where to put my elements to avoid too much zooming around.  I found myself placing and replacing things quite often, but this did get easier after some practice.  Once I was finished, I was happy to discover that there are many sharing options in Prezi: you can download it to your computer or embed it almost anywhere you want.  You also have many options for setting a privacy level you are comfortable with:

Here is my finished Prezi:

Charlotte's Web Passage on Prezi

I did have a little difficulty at the end of the lesson.  Once students zoom in on a word they think is a noun, for example, the only way to get back to the larger passage is to go back to the instructions (the previous "slide").  However, I'm sure if I played around with it a little more I could find a solution.  

In considering the advantages of Prezi over Powerpoint, there is one key issue that needs to be pointed out.  With PowerPoint, a poorly put together and delivered presentation can put your audience to sleep.  With Prezi, however, a poorly put together and delivered presentation can make your audience sick!  This exact effect is even mentioned in the second of the three basics tutorials:  “while panning across your prezi can give context to your presentation, excessive panning can cause dizziness for your audience and it makes it more difficult for you as a presenter to remember the flow of your presentation”.  Techniques such as grouping related items and using layering for details are offered as remedies to these potential problems.  

I came across a blog post by Tony Mc Neill that offers a thoughtful perspective on the PowerPoint vs. Prezi debate:

“Prezi might be a cool tool that helps us think about what a presentation is or might be. It might make us more mindful of the possibilities of a more media-rich presentation. But it also might just be a tool that bored PowerPoint users – and hey, aren’t we all bored of it? – use for novelty value and because of the attraction of its much (much) slicker interface.  I think a lot of ed techies – me included – like to deride PowerPoint as part of our professional identity performance as technology connoisseurs. We show our mastery of the chronically mutating technoscape by our embrace of the New (Twitter, Google Wave etc.) and our displays of bored indifference and condescension to mainstream technologies (pretty much anything Microsoft Office)."

Despite it's criticisms, I still see the value of a tool such as Prezi in the classroom.  Today's children are used to fast-paced digital environments so it is important that educators use a wide variety of tools to reach them. It is possible to create interesting and effective lessons and presentations with this tool, but, as mentioned above, it will require some thought into what makes an effective presentation.

Voicethread

According the the Voicethread website, this tool is "an online media album that can hold essentially any type of media (images, documents and videos) and allows people to make comments in 5 different ways - using voice (with a microphone or telephone), text, audio file, or video (with a webcam) - and share them with anyone they wish. They can even be exported to an Archival Movie for offline use on a DVD or video-enabled MP3 player. A VoiceThread allows group conversations to be collected and shared in one place, from anywhere in the world."  Prior to researching for this post I had heard about this tool, but had never worked with it.  It is very easy to sign up for a free (yet limited) account on Voicethread:


Sharing+Stores +With+Voicethread


The free account allows you to create 3 Voicethreads and add multiple identities within your account.  So, rather than signing each of your students up individually, you would simply add an identity for them to use when commenting.  If you are interested in purchasing an educator account for Voicethread the cost is $10 per month or $60 per year.  There are a couple advantages to the paid account.  First, you are not restricted to the number of threads you and your students can create and second, there is more accountability for your students because they will have their own account to use (identities can be used by anyone technically).   





Upon signing up for my account I spent some time going through the Educator Exchange to see what other teachers are doing with the tool.  I found some very interesting examples.  This is an example of a Kindergarten class that used the tool to create their own version of Dr. Seuss' The Foot Book:





This is an example of students using Voicethread to explain their thinking strategies for a math problem.  I was impressed with the power of this tool being used in this manner, given the emphasis that has been placed on personal strategies and communication in Alberta's recent math curriculum revision.  This would be an amazing way for students to demonstrate their thinking and would be a great piece to include in a student's digital portfolio to share with parents:





In this last example, students recite poetry and found pictures to accompany their chosen poems:





I was inspired to try out this tool and I had the opportunity to create a quick lesson to use with a group of grade one students last week.  After reading one of my favourite storybooks: Scaredy Squirrel by Melanie Watt, we had a discussion about conquering your fears.  We then spent some time in the computer lab using the Paint program to illustrate a time they conquered a fear.  Over recess I quickly uploaded their drawings to a Voicethread and had them script a couple of sentences about their picture.  I was impressed with how quickly this came together and the "finished" (yet, by nature, always in progress) result is really neat: 





One interesting way I see Voicethread being used is for facilitating group discussions in professional learning communities.  A key feature of Voicethread is that it is asynchronous; meaning anyone, anywhere can contribute to the conversation at any time of the day.  With some thoughtful planning, you can initiate and moderate a discussion with teachers from all over the world.  A group of graduate students from the University of Texas at Brownsville maintains a very interesting wiki entitled Disruptive Technologies.  On their Voicethread page, a Voicethread was set up entitled "100 ways to use Voicethread in edu".  Each student then signed on with their identity to add their ideas to the growing list.  This makes me see why Voicethread's tag line is "collaboration made simple".  

The amount of educators that believe in the power of Voicethread in the school environment is impressive.  I found a couple of amazing wikis dedicated to the subject:

• Voicethread 4 Education - this amazing site has examples listed by grade division and has an impressive Best Practices section that contains a wealth of information from educators well-versed in using the tool.  This wiki also has a message board (Classroom Partners) where teachers who are looking for partners in activities can post their projects.
• Digitally Speaking - Bill Ferritier's wiki, yet again, provides readers with focused, practical advice on starting rich, thoughtful discussions with your students using Voicethread.  

To sum up my exploration of Voicethread, I have to say that I feel I have only brushed the surface of the potential of this tool.  I can see myself using this tool personally to share photos and stories with friends and family, professionally in PLN's and in the classroom in so many ways. 

Bitstrips

For my third and final tool to explore this week, I chose Bitstrips.  I have never heard of this tool before and thought it might be neat to check out.  I love to incorporate humour into my teaching and I love it when students have a chance to share their often entertaining take on things with their classmates.  The first thing I noticed about Bitstrips is that there is two versions: regular and Bitstrips for schools.  I clicked on the latter and was on my way to signing up for a free 30 day trial in no time:

 After this screen I was prompted to enter the names of my students.  Since I do not actually have a class this year I simply added one "test" student and pressed through to the next step.  You can go back to this tab at any time to modify your class list.  On the next step there is a large list of pre-made lesson activities that you can assign to your students with the click of a button (of course, you can also make your own).  I chose the "family portrait" lesson to get my students acquainted with using Bitstrips:

Once I assigned this activity to my class I then logged out of my teacher account and attempted to login as my "test" student.  I entered the simple classroom code I had set and was prompted to create a password for my account.  

Once I had done that, I was directed to my home page, where the assignment was front and centre.  Working with the comic creator tool was quite easy, with many many options to create, build and modify characters.  Once my assignment was complete I could send an alert to my teacher for review and assessment.  


I enjoyed the ease of setting up an account, adding students and creating and assigning tasks to your class, but I don't feel that Bitstrips is a tool that has the power of Voicethread (for example).  If it were a free tool I would consider hopping on the bandwagon as it would be an engaging and motivating way for students to express their ideas but, after the free 30 day trial the cost to use Bitstrips is approximately $10 per month for one classroom of up to 40 students.  I feel that I would not use it nearly enough to make that cost worth your while.  


Packing up and Moving On


Communication and collaboration are two of the cornerstones of the The Partnership for 21st Century Skills framework.  By exploring these tools this week I have discovered new and innovative ways for my students to communicate their learning and invite collaboration from students in in their classroom and beyond the walls of the school.  Specifically, it is stated that students need to be able to:

• Articulate thoughts and ideas effectively using oral, written and nonverbal communication skills in a variety of forms and contexts
• Listen effectively to decipher meaning, including knowledge, values, attitudes and intentions
• Use communication for a range of purposes (e.g. to inform, instruct, motivate and persuade)
• Utilize multiple media and technologies, and know how to judge their effectiveness a priori as well as assess their impact

By teaching our students how to effectively use and evaluate the appropriateness of a variety of presentation and multimedia tools, we are going a long way towards encouraging the development of these skills in our students, as well as fostering an engaging learning environment for all. 

Next stop: Social networking in the classroom... really??

Two heads are better than one: Wikis in the elementary classroom

"The collaborative environment that wikis facilitate can teach students much about how to work with others, how to create community, and how to operate in a world where the creation of knowledge and information is more and more becoming a group effort"

-Will Richardson (p. 69 Blog, wikis, podcasts and other powerful web tools for the classroom)

For as long as I can remember, I have had the cliché sayings about teams and teamwork drilled into my head.  As a young girl playing soccer I learned that “there’s no I in team”, and I can remember a motivational poster that hung in the playroom of my after school care building that touted the fact that the word team was actually an acronym for “Together Everyone Achieves More”.  “Throughout school I learned to share, play nice and be helpful to my classmates.  As I got older my school experiences became increasingly centered around group work to varying levels of success.  These memories bring up some important questions as I prepare to explore the world of wikis this week:

• How do these experiences and colloquialisms translate into the new world of the Read/Write web?
• How can this tool be used effectively with primary students?
• What roadblocks and concerns should I consider when preparing to use this tool?

http://www.memcmiami.com/

First Impressions

The commercial below is a powerful example of collaboration in action.  Every small part seen plays a critical role towards the end product.  Every contribution, whether large or small, leads up to the impressive finish.  I read that it took them over 600 takes to get this right, each time correcting and tweaking the problem area until the sequence ran smoothly. 

This is the power of the wiki.  Collaboration and the coming together of multiple perspectives and skills-sets for the greater good.  


But, what exactly is a wiki? (to me, it sounds like a fuzzy creature of some sort):

I am not completely new to wikis. I have been using wikispaces since April.  Last year I was interested in creating a website for my grade two class and I settled on wikispaces for a couple of reasons.  First, the ability to embed glogs from glogster was a key feature for me.  In this way, I could make my website colourful, interactive and informative (I know... not the most important thing but, appearance does make a difference for me!).  I was inspired by other teacher wikispaces I had come across.  As I began to build my wiki I was pleasantly surprised with with the ability to add and embed almost anything you can imagine.  I have yet to come across any restrictions in terms of the amount or types of content you can link to, embed or post on a wikispace.  Wikispaces has given away over 30000 wikis to educators in the last few years.  This means that, as an educator, you are entitled to a free upgraded version of your wiki with no ad spaces cluttering up the page.  Once you sign up for wikispaces you will be on your way to creating a wiki in no time.  


After signing up and clicking on the "create a new wiki" it is important to become familiar with a few things.  The hub of your wiki lies within the following three functions.  On my wiki, these can be found on the upper right hand corner, but this may be different on a brand new wiki, depending on default layouts:

When you click to add a new page to your wiki you have a blank canvas ready to be filled with links, information and widgets.  This is all made possible from the edit bar that pops up on your new page.  Most of the pages on my wiki have something or other embedded onto them.  This is very easy to do using the "widget" button:

As mentioned before, I often use glogs on my wiki but I have also used embedded Google Calendar, video and audio plug-ins.  The beauty of using the html code is that if I make any changes to my calendar or a glog that is on my wiki through glogster or google, the changes automatically apply to my wiki, without me lifting another finger, pure magic!  I don't really fuly understand how this works, but I appreciate it nonetheless!

The "Manage Changes" section of your wiki is where you can monitor the types of changes made to your wiki, and you will be able to see who made them.  If someone has come in and mucked things up, you can easily revert to a previous version of that particular page:

And, finally, there are three key features in your "manage wiki" space that are fundamental to creating a functional space for you and your students.  

• Pages - this is where you manage the layers of pages you have created.  You can edit, delete, link, set protection levels and order pages in this area
• Permissions - this is where you dictate who is able to edit your wiki.  On my wiki right now I am the only person able to add or edit content (hopefully that will change soon!)
• Look and Feel - This is where you can customize the layout, colours and fonts that appear on your page (yes, I know, it may be vain but the look and fell of your page goes a long way in creating a first impression when people visit your site) 

An additional useful benefit of signing up for an account at wikispaces is the ability to follow other users' wikis.

So, as you can see, it is fairly simple to set up a wiki to use as a website.  The way in which I am using my wiki now is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the potential of this tool.  What I wanted to discover this week is how I can use my wiki to invite and encourage collaboration from my students.  As Will Richardson says: "the more autonomy teachers give to students in terms of negotiating the scope and content they are creating, the better" (p. 61).  

Bringing it Home

Just as I discovered with podcasts last week, there is an amazing array of wikis on the web on every topic imaginable.  A Super Mario Brothers wiki, a Hallowiki, and a fashion wiki.  Travelwiki offers pages for all possible destinations, very helpful for planning a future dream trip to Peru.  You can view content on these pages and, if I ever get brave enough, perhaps edit a mistake or add to the conversation.


Last spring I dug out my teacher portfolio.  After I blew the dust off of it, I flipped through the contents.  A white binder full of paper: my transcripts, lesson plans I created for practicums, my resume, some reference letter and a bunch of other junk from my pre-service teaching days that I don't think would be of any interest to a principal of a prospective school.  The idea of presenting something like this, even if it were to be updated, is embarrassing to me.  I decide that it was time to bring my portfolio into the 21st century.  I had just gone through the process of creating my class wiki, so I decided to create a professional wiki that highlights some of my achievements and classroom projects.  At an interview, I would simply give the principal the link to my wiki and it was up to them to view it, as interest and time allows.  Again, I know this is not an example of using wikis in the true sense of the word, but, up until now, this is how I have viewed the tool.  

Bringing it to School

Along the way this week, I discovered lots of examples of ways in which teachers are using wikis to enhance student learning and engagement.  There's a teacher from Moosejaw using her wiki to invite collaborators on math projects from around the world.  An interesting collaborative literature project that involves many classes from around the world can be found here.   The popular website readwritethink even has a lesson plan for how to pull off a collaborative storytelling project using wikis with your students.  There's even a Boston professor who uses his wiki solely as the textbook for his course.  Gerald Kane defends this decision by saying: “my wiki is my textbook now.  This platform is infinitely better and gets better information from a variety of sources. It takes a year and half for a textbook to get published, and by the time that happens it is outdated. [The use of] textbooks will begin to fade ... and these more collaborative-based, environment will probably rise to the surface." My question is: where do I start!?


As I have for the past couple of weeks I turned to Bill Ferritier’s wiki Digitally Speaking to see his take on the power of wikis in the classroom.   Ferritier provides some important, practical advice on incorporating the use of wikis into the classroom.  First, he suggests that before you attempt to have students editing and creating wikis, they should spend some time looking at the characteristics of quality wikis.  He provides this handout to help students explore these qualities:

Characteristics Quality Wiki Pages

He also offers a teacher tips printable to help guide teachers into creating engaging, quality experiences with wikis in the classroom.  Some key tips mentioned include:

• Encourage students to actively revise and edit another's content
• Embrace inaccurate content - Bill says that "Teachers using wikis successfully in their classrooms, however, embrace inaccurate content posted on classroom wikis as a teachable moment because they know that succeeding as consumers of information in the 21st Century requires students to develop a healthy skepticism of any content posted online. In a world where content is constantly changing and publishing is easy for anyone, researchers simply cannot assume that digital sources—wikis, blogs, websites, online videos—are accurate and up-to-date."
• Discuss wiki vandalism - encourage students that "nothing is lost forever on a wiki"
• Use RSS feed readers to monitor changes to classroom wiki projects
• Consider naming and training student editors

So far, all my exploring and research seems to be geared towards using wikis with kids from the upper elementary grades all the way to university.  An important question in my mind as I explore this tool is how to make the leap from using my class wiki simply as a display environment to having my primary students begin to add and edit content and collaborate to create shared resources.  It occurred to me that, in terms of teaching style, I am using my wiki in a very teacher directed manner.  This virtual style does not fit with my real-life teaching style that is geared more towards student-centered, constructivist learning.  I found an encouraging example of a second grade class wiki where students had permissions to add content.  At first glance this wiki appears much like mine in terms of content (subject area links, pages with student work samples and classroom news) but she has gone a little further to incorporate student input into the wiki.  The teacher had added in simple elements such as an open comment page where students could post comments and thoughts they were having.  There’s also a page where students can write about their favourite book.  The teacher also had students do some collaborative storytelling, with each student adding to the previous student’s work.  While exploring her class wiki I discovered that this teacher, Patti Harju, has a wiki geared towards teachers wishing to learn how to use wikis with their students.   She offers clear, step-by-step instructions on how to add students as users into your wiki.  

I came across an article packed with ideas on how to incorporate wikis into your classroom (50 of them to be exact!), organized into categories such as resource creation, student participation, group projects, student interaction and community.  Each idea is linked to an example wiki.  Some of the highlights for me included:

• ·      Vocabulary lists
• ·      Group authoring
• ·      Study guides
• ·      Student portfolios
• ·      Correction completion
• ·      Classroom newspaper/scrapbook
• ·      Peer editing
• Creating a wikibook - I think this is an intriguing idea, and wikibooks even offers a junior version.  This example is one that I may use for a Small Crawling and Flying Animals unit.  

This short video highlights the experience of a teacher using a class wiki for collaboration on a study guide for the first time:

Of course, I must discuss the dark side of wiki creation when considering the use of this tool in the school environment.  The very element that makes a wiki such a powerful tool is the same thing that opens them up to potential sabotage: anyone can edit anything.  Wikipedia is a prime example of this element but the figures are not as scary as you may think.  The power in numbers and community watchdog nature of the site makes sure that errors or vandalism is fixed quickly, usually within minutes.  In the school environment it is important to add some layer of protection to your wiki, so not just anyone can edit anything.  Luckily, wikispaces allows you to set multiple layers of protection and permissions into your wiki and it is easy to only allow your students to edit content.  Danah Boyd on this issue:

“All too often we blame the technology for problematic human behaviors. We fail to recognize that technology makes them more visible but the human behaviors are rooted in larger issues. In turn, we treat the symptoms rather than the disease. The solution is not to bandaid the problems by taking away or limiting the technologies, but to make the world a better place from the inside out.” 

Another important way that wikis can be used is to create or enhance a professional learning network.  Creating a wiki where teachers, regardless of geographical location or time constraints, can add facts, links, multimedia presentations that contribute to the network seems like a natural use of this tool.  Some school districts are using wikis to share resources.  As someone who, for the past six years, has been the only grade two teacher at my school, this idea is encouraging to me.  Teaching is an isolating profession and the willingness and ability to share and collaborate easily across schools is a great thing.  After all, if we are encouraging these skills and habits in our students, shouldn't we be modelling them ourselves?

Packing up and moving on

The Partnership for 21st Century Skills sees the "4 C's" as critical skills for students to develop in our day and age.  These are:

• Collaboration
• Critical thinking
• Communication
• Creativity

If I am able to get my students working towards adding, editing and correcting wikis as part of daily life in the classroom, I am going a long way towards making sure that my students develop all four of these skills.  Wikis provide students with an authentic audience, and, I believe that students are more accountable for content they supply to a wiki as it will be viewed with a critical eye by all readers.  Collaboration, in particular, means students are working effectively and respectfully with diverse teams, exercising flexibility and willingness to be helpful in making necessary compromises to achieve a common goal, assuming shared responsibility for collaborative work, and valuing the individual contributions made by each team member.  

 
I'm sure that most everyone out there is familiar with Bloom's taxonomy thinking skills.  Moving from lower order skills such as knowledge and comprehension to higher order ones such as evaluation and synthesis.  In 2001 a former student of Bloom, Lorin Anderson, revised Bloom's Taxonomy and published the Bloom's Revised Taxonomy.  The emphasis in the revised taxonomy is the use of verbs rather than nouns for each of the categories.  Andrew Churches saw the need to refine this taxonomy of verbs to reflect the new technologies children are using in their schools (the entire document is a very interesting read - it can be found here):

http://www.techlearning.com/article/8670

As you can see, "wiki-ing" can be found at the very top of the order.  Students need to be able to incorporate all of the lower level thinking skills simultaneously to work with a wiki.  Now, that is powerful stuff!

Next stop.... presentation and multimedia tools.

Check, check... Is this thing on? Podcasting in the Classroom

Wikimedia Commons

On the evening of December 24, 1906 a Canadian inventor named Reginald Fessenden used an alternator-transmitter to send out a short program from Brant Rock, Massechusetts. This is believed to be the first radio broadcast. The program included a phonograph record of Ombra mai fù by Handel, followed by Fessenden himself playing the song O Holy Night on the violin. Finishing with reading a passage from the Bible: 'Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to men of good will' (Gospel of Luke 2:14).
In his broadcast, Fessenden asked his listeners to write in and tell about their location and the quality of the broadcast. Surprisingly, listeners wrote in from hundreds of miles away!

Image by ylvas via Flickr

First Impressions


Podcasting is the modern natural extension of radio broadcasting. A brief history (Wikipedia):

• September 2000: the first system is developed that enables the selection, automatic downloading and storage of serial episodic audio content on PCs and portable devices
• February 12, 2004: The term "podcasting" was one of several terms for portable listening to audioblogs suggested by Ben Hammersley
• On September 28, 2004: Technology columnist Doc Searls began keeping track of how many Google hits found for the word "podcasts". Hits recorded on this day: 24
• September 28, 2004: 526 Google hits
• October 1, 2004: 2,750 hits
• October 18, 2004: the number of hits on Google for the word "podcasts" surpasses 100,000
• November, 2004: Podcasting networks begin to emerge
• December 3, 2005: New Oxford American Dictionary declares "Podcast" the word of the year
• September 28, 2005: One year after first tracking hits for the word "podcasts" on Google, Searls reports more than 100,000,000 hits
• June 28, 2005: Apple adds a podcast-subscription feature to its release of iTunes 4.9

So, nowadays, with a computer, internet connection and a microphone anybody can broadcast anything. Really, anything! (more on that later). As defined by Will Richardson podcasting is "the creation and distribution of amateur radio, pure and simple" (p. 112 Blogs, wikis, podcasts and other powerful web tools for the classroom). Wikipedia extends this definition: "a podcast is a series of digital media files (either audio or video) that are released episodically and often downloaded through web syndication. Initially I was confused by the addition of video files into the podcasting realm, this seems to blur the lines between videosharing, screencasting and podcasting. I had thought of it as purely audio. No matter what type of files are included in a podcast, a key identifying feature is the ability to capitalize on web syndication and subscription capabilities. You can use RSS feeds to automatically download new episodes of your favourite podcast and even transfer them directly to your iPod or mp3 player. An overview of this process using iTunes (via videojug):



Made By You:
How To Subscribe To Podcasts In ITunes


Bringing it Home

I have heard of the word "podcasting" before but had never really explored the types of shows available right under my nose. To iTunes I went! I whiled away an entire afternoon searching the site, listening and viewing podcasts on an unbelievable array of topics. I had no idea this podcasting thing was so diverse! A quick browse through several categories of interest (fashion, health and nutrition, travel, shoes) revealed endless podcasts available for every topic imaginable. Unbeknownst to me, websites I frequently visit and magazines I currently read have podcasts too. My favourite hand-made goods website Etsy has one, Women's Heath produces one with workouts for your iPod (although I was too exhausted to actually exercise after all this searching to go any further than subscribing and downloading them - still counts, right?). After a while my mind was swirling with the possibilities. I could listen to the Shoe Madam's podcast on my way to work, catch the latest Women of Web 3.0 episode while walking my dog and even dream of future trips with the Amateur Traveler during my bus ride to the University. Awesome! Again, the Read/Write Web and the power of syndication has helped me filter the massive amount of content out there and tailor what reaches my eyes and ears to my interests.

After exploring what was out there, my next task was to figure out how to create these podcasts. I explored a variety of sites and programs for this. In the end, I figured out that my new MacBook Pro has more than one program to create and publish podcasts (I actually found a program called Podcast Capture hiding in my utilities!). Garageband is another option for episode creation. But, since I work with PC's in the school environment I looked into open-source software and applications available on the Web. Audioboo and Audacity are excellent options. The former is web-based and is a simple, effective way to create and share voice recordings. Audacity is a comprehensive audio editing program but it requires software download. In my searching I stumbled upon Aviary's Myna application. This program met all the criteria I was looking for: it's web-based, fairly easy to use, allows multiple clips to be edited together and, when you're all finished, lets you download your creation in mp3 or wav format. You can import audio files or record them directly into Myna and the icing on the cake is the library of royalty-free loops, intros and music clips. This was the clear winner for me. I must mention one huge limitation to all this greatness though (alas, there's always a catch): you cannot mix something longer than six minutes. I created a screencast for this program:




Bringing it to School


Although I am on leave this year for my studies I have been asked to do some technology work and projects at my former school. As part of their AISI project, I am funded for approximately three half-days per grade (K-9, plus some planning time) to work with students in some area of computers and technology. This arrangement has multiple benefits for all involved and this week in particular I was able to capitalize on it and use the grade sevens as my guinea pigs in a podcasting experiment on Friday afternoon. Each student in this junior high program has their own laptop and the school has wireless internet throughout so there are few barriers to what I can do with them. Inspired by podcasts by kids (Radio WillowWeb and others freely available on the Educator's Podcast Network) I proposed the onerous task of creating a podcast in one short afternoon. I began by sharing some kid-produced podcasts and giving them a brief tutorial of Myna. After approximately 20 minutes of instruction they were off into groups of four, brainstorming segments, writing sketches of scripts and recording pieces. My role for the afternoon was their guide, helping them with the odd snafu, giving time cues and suggesting guidelines for appropriateness. The results were AMAZING! I was so impressed with how engaged they were and how they were able to complete a finished piece within the afternoon (had we had more time we would have written more detailed scripts, experimented with music and further polished the finish product but, the bare bones are there). Here is a peek at one group's final product:



If I can offer one piece of advice to teachers interested in podcasting with their students it would be to just go for it! I had no idea what was going to come out of this afternoon with these kids, the whole project could have gone flat but instead it was one of the most powerful teaching experiences I've ever had. You can read and read and read (as I did) about the benefits of podcasting but until you try it, you won't know how amazing it can be. There wasn't one student in that class that was afraid to dive in and at the end of the day they left the class talking about ideas and segments for future episodes.

This activity got me thinking about other ways podcasting can be integrated into the curriculum. Here's a list I have compiled (for more ideas see here, here and here):

• Debates
• Classroom News (weekly or monthly)
• Audio school/neighborhood tour
• Interview experts from far away (Skype is a helpful tool to assist with this)
• Literature discussions

Teachers can also make use of podcasting to share news and events with parents and search out podcasts that compliment teaching subjects.

On his wiki Digitally Speaking Bill Ferritier provides a number of practical suggestions for integrating podcasting into the curriculum. His downloadable resources also provide structured scripts and guidelines that make it easy to get the ball rolling with your students. The example below guides students to create a script for a literature debate.

Handout IMHO Script


Packing up and Moving on

During my journey in preparation for this blog post I have discovered the power of using podcasting in the classroom. This is a medium that is accessible, easy to create and does not bring up many of the same privacy issues as video or photo sharing. Students have the opportunity to meaningfully participate in culture and society and take ownership of their content for an authentic audience. Chris Shamburg offers some insight on the 21st century skills students are developing while using this medium. Chris is the author of the book Student Powered Podcasting and can be heard in a thought-provoking episode of the ISTE Author Series Podcasts. He explains that the power of podcasting lies in the shift from being consumers of content to creators of content (this certainly seems to be emerging as a common theme in all this web 2.0 stuff!). The higher level thinking skills of synthesis are required as students collect and evaluate multiple sources to produce a podcast. Podcasting also allows students to connect personal interests to popular activities and opinions. Students take ownership of their work as they produce for an authentic audience from (potentially) anywhere in the world:

“For example, the hands-on and reflective approach to copyright, fair use, and digital media that students employ in their podcasting can become a tool for them to think about the balance of individual rights and community benefits. Similarly, the powerful idea of audience, whether in creating a media review or an audio tour, can become a tool for them to empathize with and anticipate the needs of others. In student-powered podcasting, these issues are not isolated lessons, but fundamentals of students’ work as podcasters.”

Of course, Chris warns that podcasting is not a miracle tool meant to repackage standard, boring teaching. We do not want to use this tool in a way that would result in passivity in our students. We need to make sure we are integrating the technology in a way that will “help them effectively participate in media creation, personal understanding, and communication with others”.

Photo by Derek K. Miller via Flickr
 

Even in his wildest dreams I don't think the brilliant Fessenden could have fathomed what he was on to with his broadcast on that fateful Christmas Eve in 1906. This singular event led to the advent of modern radio broadcasting as we know it today. (As a side note however, one has to wonder if he obtained proper permissions from Handel to play his tune!)

Next stop… wiki wiki