Week 9 Reflection: Media Collections (Video and Audio)

This week's lesson on media collections focused on videos, while the reading that I've chosen to reflect on,There's Something in the Air - Podcasting in Education built on that by focusing mainly on audio, leading up to next week's challenge to create and distribute your own podcast. This really works for me as I use Youtube regularly to post videos on my online course (so it was good to have a refresher and explore TeacherTube, etcetera), but I have never done a podcast. It has been a good movement, for me, from one topic to the next.

The challenge in this week's lesson was to share a video that you created on a video multimedia library. There didn't seem to be a Lesson 9: General Discussion for this (probably in light of the research article wiki discussions and the topic sharing discussion board), so I've posted one of my recent videos here:



This video was to help get my students working; I'm happy to say that it sort of worked, and sad to say that it sort of didn't!

Moving on to the Campbell reading - it was really enlightening because before I read it, I had no idea how to podcast, how to listen to one, where to get one, etcetera. I wouldn't necessarily say that I know how to now, but at least I understand what podcasts are actually used for, where the term comes from, and who listens to them. The comparison of a podcast to a newspaper definitely helped, and I have to say that I feel pretty excited by the idea of listening to podcasts (aka newspaper, in my mind) while "driving, walking or working out at the gym" (Campbell 2005).

That said, I have to make it clear that I do not learn well by listening. It is simply not how I learn, and I chalk it up to the teenage summers that I spent putting lids on bottles in my father's herbal manufactory. These summers, surrounded by machinery that made it impossible to talk to your co-workers, meant that I spent hours every day zoning out, daydreaming in glorious technicolor, while I completed my tasks. Campbell addresses this very point: the listener cannot control the pace of the podcast and is thus at the mercy of the speaker. He then asserts that listening is a skill that people need to learn. Thus is true to a certain extent: listening is important. But being intuitive to what type of learner you are is also a skill, and frankly, is just as important. A stronger defence, which he uses, is that listeners can listen to podcasts over and over again. I can tell you already, that will be me.

A final point on a part in this article that touched me: Campbell discussed iTunes's role in podcasting. This is exciting because I actually have iTunes on my computer! My boyfriend uses it all the time for who knows what. Looks like I'm going to find out next week . . .

Reference:
Campbell, G. (2005). There's Something in the Air: Podcasting in Education. EDUCAUSE Review. 40(6) Retrieved October 31, 2008 from http://connect.educause.edu/Library/EDUCAUSE+Review/TheresSomethingintheAirPo/40587