When the Oxford English dictionary approved of the word "podcast" in December, 2005, it was clear that the era of personal broadcasting was here to stay. In a world powered by the availability of information and multimedia on demand, podcasting provides a rich "any where, any time" solution for those constantly on the go. At my college, podcasting is used in one of the classes in the IT curriculum. The results have been gratifying, showing that this technology is maturing and becoming a mainstream phenomenon.
Podcasting at Bentley College
Bentley College is a business school just outside of Boston, MA, with 3,900 undergraduate and 1,300 graduate students, where information technology is integrated into the core business curriculum. In my "technology intensive" IT 101 (Introduction to Technology) course, students purchase Dell Axim Pocket PCs for their personal use in order to learn about technology. Both listening to and creating podcasts are an integral part of the course.
IT 101 is a model course for introducing concepts of technology as they relate to business and the liberal arts: business and information technology, ethics and social responsibility, and global commerce and culture. Adding podcasting into the course provides a new technology outlet for sharing their thoughts and experiences in several of these areas. What may have previously been a written assignment is now an exercise in interpersonal communication and critical thinking: students need to be fluent both in using a technology and in explaining a topic. Students are more likely to do their own work since they must complete it in their own voices.
As podcast producers, students use an emerging technology to report on their experiences as they complete specific technology-based activities. They use new media to share their own messages. The ability to create their own podcasts entirely using a Pocket PC enables students to use technology to do "on the scene" reporting of their experiences interacting with technology. For example, when students go off campus in search of free wireless Internet, they use their Pocket PCs to create a sixty-second podcast describing where they are and whose Internet connection they are using. Later in the semester, when we discuss careers in information technology, they will interview people about their jobs and make their conversations available as podcasts for others to listen.
As consumers, students learn to use the Internet to search for and subscribe to relevant or interesting feeds. A community develops as students listen to each other's podcasts, and find and share podcasts related to course topics. For example, the Mr. Excel podcast (http://feeds.feedburner.com/learnexcelfrommrexcelpodcast) with Bill Jelen has a daily two-minute Excel tip. Watching a two-minute video clip on a Pocket PC is an enticing homework assignment that not only introduces basic Excel concepts, but also requires technical competency in knowing how to download it.
During the first half of this semester, I posted my class lectures as audio or video podcasts, listing the topics of each lecture in its description. Students would listen to them if they missed class, or use them as a study tool. One student said, "I listen to the podcast on my Pocket PC and follow along with the Power Point slides. It's a great way to remind me of what went on in class." Many students, however, felt that listening to a complete one-hour lecture took too long and noted it was hard to jump to specific topic areas within a single audio file, despite the contents listing. They suggested that shorter formats would be more attractive for them to use.
Therefore, for the second half of the semester, students worked in pairs to create a five-to-ten minute audio or video podcast presenting one lesson they learned in class on their assigned day (Fig. 1), and within 24 hours of that session, post it to a common class podcast to which all students subscribe. They then listen to or watch them on their Pocket PCs.
Printer-friendly version
