Podcast University
Posted on December 6, 2005
Filed Under Podcasting, Computing, General |
I’m attending the Centre for Leadership and Learning’s Learning Technology Symposium at McMaster.
The day has been very informative, but the current talk is great - Wayne MacPhail from Rabble. Hopefully Wayne will let me post the talk …. question answered: Yes. I did not doubt that he would, since Wayne GETS IT and is doing a great thing with podcasting at Rabble.
Some of the techology that is used in the classroom, or to enhance the classroom, discussed today are high cost - in time, effort, and money. But Wayne presented an overview of podcasting and how it can be simply and cheaply ($8 mic - free software - little setup overhead) to deliver content. Now content could be promotional material for prospective student, lectures, answers to questions, additional keener material, accessibility for people with disabilities….
From a quick googleing it looks like only University of Western Ontario and University of British Columbia are the only regular podcasters for campus news, I did not see anything about podcasting courses. I hope Wayne’s talk will spur some of the MAC faculty to GET IT, and start providing educational content via podcast (where podcast is either audio or video). If anyone at MAC is reading - and soon listening, Wayne’s talk was motivation to get off my lazy a$$ and just do it - to maintain a reputation as “Innovation University of the Year” you better get on this, it is not a fad.
Update: Here is the audio from Wayne’s talk => 
Update 2: CLL added most of the slides from the LTS talks, here.
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3 Responses to “Podcast University”
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Thanks for the kind words. Mac certainly should set up a podcast network. I’d be happy to help with that. The campus is full of great stories, content and learning.
Just a FYI but McMaster Engineering (first year) have a pod cast for prospective students.
It’s called Radio Fireball and you can find the links at http://www.eng.mcmaster.ca/prospective/2005/radio/
I hope we never see a University course about podcasting. It is a neat hobby and a good way to express yourself so I could see it as part of a multimedia course, but not the meat and potatoes. It would be right up there with Pop Music and Basket Weaving 101.
I think podcasting of lectures would be neat, but it would be just like providing electronic slides. Some profs don’t do it because they want you to come to class and “interact” not just passivly listen.
Chris: Thanks for the link to the Radio Fireball, I forgot to add it to Wayne’s creds. But I was scaning for a perpetual show with frequent updates (RF was a 4 podcast promo for MAC Eng).
Wayne: What kind of feedback did you get from MAC? From past experience, there are primarily 2 groups on the diffusion of innovation curve - early adopters, and laggards - with few in between. If you do get involved with a podcast network at MAC, I’d recommend you insist in a single network, with separate channels for the various Faculties (then subchannels for departments). This is instead of working separtely with each group (i.e. department, progamme, etc.). It would make for better expose of the podcasts, as well as for MAC itself.