Another sign of things to come…
K-State plans to have all 6,000 class podcasts available to its students this year, making it by far the education realm’s largest podcasting implementation worldwide.
So does the classroom of the future, even in high school (maybe middle school) have the built in capability for teachers to record and post their lessons?
technorati tags:podcasting, classroom, learning20
You might want to take a look at the article I link to from our local paper. It is another sign of things to come with scholalry research going Web 2.0
There is not much to celebrate about K-state. They are taking the same old information delivery strategy of education and dressing it up with a current technology and then locking it behind a Blackbaord course management system. They took the easiest route possible to adopt soethin that sounds cool but makes vhery litle change in the learning experience. Is tis what we are fighting for?
I hate to admit, but I think Rich is right. I have nothing against trying to conserve what is generated as we teach. That is a noble goal, but what are we teaching. What is the use of this content? Perhaps it will end up putting teachers out of the lecture business. That might be a good goal, too.
Is the web (2.0 and all) just old wine in new bottles? Yes, some of it quite good, but the larger question is this: is the new bottle even a bottle? I see weblogs, wikis, social bookmarking, podcasting, vcasting, streaming, mashups, ad nauseum (take a look at Emily Chan’s Ehub if you want to get dizzy about all this) as a potentially new, highly decentralized, folksonomic learning …process? You can put old wine in it, but I think it was meant to hold ambrosia instead. The whole container metaphor breaks down as it did for a group of teachers I tried to work with this weekend on greating podcasts. I made the point that for any of these new techologies to be useful that they had to be easier, faster, cheaper, and better than what was already being used. I had an epiphany as I said this: this can’t happen. What I was saying was that they had to make the tools fit into the dominant administrative tool–schools. This is like trying to use the claw part of a hammer to cut steak. Yes, it works, but is that the best use for that tool?
Our tools have pushed beyond the ability of the existing institutions to adopt them. School is a zero sum game as it is practiced today. There are efficiencies to be had, but none so revolutionary that current administrators will be able to “fold in” Web 2.0. (I am sorry to use that term, but it is the only shorthand word I know to describe the networked zeitgeist.) Look at the fear most administrators feel toward weblogs. Weblogs demand freedom of a larger kind than schools know how to give. Many of us have simply routed around that fear and become a conduit by which students can exercise that freedom, but it is risky business professionally and personally. Yet we do it. Why? Because in our gut we know that this is where our students will live in their future. It is a sin to let them out into that world totally unprepared.
If schools cannot adapt (they haven’t yet) and there is a new metaphor (bottles no more, perhaps webs), then wht must we do? I think we are called upon to do what in our hearts we have always known. We must tell a new story and weave a new cloth that fits our new identities and that holds all of our tools.
The Kansas U. podcasts are what they are. I doubt they are a stepping stone to a new and better learning place. We don’t have any idea yet where that place might be. I think that is the most frustrating part of being in the middle of a revolution. You have enough perspective to see that where you have been is not prologue to where you really need to be. It is there to be seen, but your brain cannot process it. If I may engage in some hyperbolic analogy, I feel like Moses must have felt: the Promised Land is out there, but we will never live to see it. Long may we all live, long may we keep on.
I think that it is amazing that K-State is offering such a variety of course through podcasts. I do however wonder about the quality of each podcast and the direction that the school is headed in. Podcasts are a great way to communicate with your students. It allows for the students to listen to the lecture at a time that is suitable for them. Some have mentioned that they are worried about putting professors out of the “lecture business†and this is a legitimate concern. The need for professor would decrease if the idea of podcast caught on. If the class completely relied upon the podcast then professors would only be needed to update these lectures when it was needed. We are a convenience based society. The podcast allows for students on the go to fit in their lectures while they’re on the bus or running errands around town. I know that I have benefited from this flexibility in my schooling.