Category: tech contrarianism

Total 133 Posts

Podcasts: Why?

I’ve been grappling with that leadership meme that’s floating around (thanks, Christian & Rick, for keeping me up the other night) but until then, can someone tell me what’s the point of podcasting? What’s your game here?

Full disclosure: I’ve listened to maaaaybe a couple of podcasts in my life, so it’s possible I’m simply not the audience. I’m an irregular audience for a photography podcast, NPR’s This American Life, and Slate’s Spoiler Special. Given the comments, I’m not sure what an avid podcast-listener looks like, but I’m pretty sure I ain’t him. Whether this constitutes an informed opinion of podcasting is, as it always has been, up to the discernment of the reader. From my perspective, the medium has offered up a survey of its advantages and disadvantages without much of a struggle.

In return, for the podcasting enthusiasts, here are a few reasons why your podcast isn’t feeding my iTunes jukebox, why I secretly wonder if podcasting is only on the guest list of Educational Tech Initiatives simply Because It’s There, if it’s simply ed-technology for its own sake.

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Important Ratio #1

Around the edublogosphere, a teacher without a wiki counts less than a fireman without a hydrant. I teach. I blog. And yet I don’t use Moodle in my classroom. My classroom isn’t Web 2.0 compliant. My students aren’t podcasting. I can imagine maybe one out of my eighty kids running home to her blog after school but the rest are oblivious to any Internet past their MySpace profiles and Google.

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