Experience Publishing a Podcast

My experience setting up a podcast was relatively straightforward. The process was definitely more involved than the previous assignments of setting up a blog or YouTube posting. This is my first experience actually creating and publishing a podcast though I’ve consumed podcasts in the past. My first step was to search for a guide describing a start to finish recipe. I found a guide that incorporated Blogger and I attempted to follow the instructions.

I found that the most challenging step was to host the physical media file on a web site. (edit) [I missed the moodle forum post where my prof directs us to use podbean] There were several suggested sites for hosting media files; some of them were free, others had a free trial, but none of the ones I tried was easy to use. I already had a Google Docs and SkyDrive account for hosting files in the cloud. Therefore, I attempted to serve a media file from Google Docs but the URL does not resolve to the actual media file, rather, the URL serves a page where the media file may be downloaded. …Ditto for SkyDrive. I needed a hosting service for a few other projects and decided to drop 4 dollars on a normal web hosting service that I could also use to host the media files. I registered a domain at Go Daddy and signed up for a simple web hosting service. Within about 15 minutes, my site was up and I was able to use their FTP tool to upload my media files. At this point, I had a live URL to the media files; I posted a Blogger blog post with a link containing the URL to my media file. Then, I provided my Blogger URL to my Google Feedburner service. Since this service is part of the Google single-sign-on landscape, getting started was painless. Feedburner provides a means to distribute content by subscription to a web portal, news reader, or podcast. The FeedBurner site provides a decent overview of feeds (http://www.google.com/support/feedburner/bin/answer.py?answer=79408&cbid=79408&src=cb&lev= index ).
I verified that my audio file was available through ITunes by clicking on the ITunes link on the Feedburner site. My ITunes application loaded and I was able to see my podcast audio entry in the podcasts section.

Feedburner Subscribe Link Test

 Subscribe to my Sample Feed in a reader

Subscribe to in ITunes

Podcast - Second Try

Another attempt to publish a feed from blogger to feedburner

A learning situation I've encountered and the learning theories that applied

My best learning seems to occur outside of the normal classroom setting and framework. During my computer science undergrad schooling, we had the privilege of small class sizes and a framework where the same faculty and students participated in several related classes within our program. One common learning situation involved learning a concept in Discrete Mathematics, then applying it the Functional-Programming class, and then revisiting the very same concept in the Digital Logic class. Students revisited the concept several times throughout the day and week in different contexts. This behavior of switching contexts could count as an example of the Lateral Thinking Theory. Each week, the class’s curriculum would build on the previous teachings while integrating new ideas in the different class contexts. Because the faculty and students stayed together through the different classes throughout the year, the teachers would often ask questions and engage in an active dialogue while referring to concepts in another class. I found this approach to be effective in exploring and comprehending new ideas. Incorporating a concept with new contexts made learning an active process where we would initially struggle to construct new ideas based on our previous understanding of the concept and the core principals of the concepts would emerge. We would often gain new insight that went beyond what was taught. Of course, many of these principals are part of the Constructivist Theory. I believe that I shared a strong relationship with my faculty during this class/program, which played an active role in the quality of my work and the extent of my efforts to comprehend the material. I was often motivated to study was often because I really looked forward to maintaining a good relationship with my faculty and enjoy an informed discussion on the material. The good relationship also allowed me to feel comfortable in engaging in open discussions in the classroom in front of the rest of the class. I believe that the Attachment Theory is relevant here.

My experience with technologies mentioned in the learning objectives

Delicious is a service that I had not used until now. When I’m working as a software developer, I often use StackOverflow, a popular site that makes judicious use of social tagging. For me, it is something that needs to be experienced to appreciate. As with StackOverflow, the Delicous search results are exceptionally accurate/precise, but the recall is quite less than what I would have retrieved from a Google search. In addition to tagging, Delicious provides a great utility to import/upload your browser’s bookmarks so they are in the “cloud”. The bookmarks utility provides great utility in auto-tagging your bookmarks and searching bookmarks by tag. Imported bookmarks may also be manually tagged. I’ve uploaded a sample of my IE bookmarks. The auto-complete search-box adds a polished feel to the search experience.

My experience with flicker was useful. I generally use Google Picasa for managing my photos online. Uploading, managing, and tagging photos on Flicker was a straightforward. I uploaded a few images, tagged them, and organized them into a set.

Clifton and Mann, Can YouTube enhance student nurse learning?

Clifton and Mann present several arguments to support the applicability and utility of YouTube as a learning medium and tool. I agree on several of their points and I believe that YouTube should not be dismissed as a teaching tool. The authors point out that already, many mainstream organizations have established YouTube channels for disseminating information and content. The latest generation of students is well acquainted with YouTube and digital content. These students will most probably resist a traditional teaching curriculum that is devoid of electronic assets; for example, a class where the schedule and assignments are only written on a whiteboard and students must notate and reproduce the information. This would not be acceptable to students today. There is an expectation for such information to be published electronically.

I believe that this discussion should make a distinction between employing on-demand digital media over the internet and utilizing YouTube as a specific product/service. YouTube’s goals are generating advertising revenue and keeping their visitors on the YouTube site for as long as possible. The interface can be quite distracting if used in a learning context, especially for today’s students that are more easily distractible. Although YouTube can be employed as a teaching tool with varying levels of success, YouTube was not designed for this purpose. YouTube does enjoy a high level of adoption and a vast array of public content; you enjoy and utilize free content but you give up control and must submit to advertising. I believe that on-demand digital media on the internet can be incorporated into an interface that is specifically designed for that purpose.

Several psychological principals come into play with employing digital media for education. Clifton and Mann discuss surface learning vs. deep learning. One unintended consequence of a popular educational YouTube channel, Khan Academy, was that YouTube’s restrictions on the length of a video may have actually benefited the viewers. These videos are all about ten minutes in length and have been argued to be an ideal duration from a retention point-of-view. Although these videos have been popular, there have been challenges with schools that want access but have poor internet bandwidth. The YouTube model does not help. A new system was developed where the original videos were hosted on a local server in the school’s local area network and served from there. An educational media server platform should provide a flexible model that can accommodate these scenarios.

Fischer - Comparison of blogged and written reflections in two medicine clerkships

The Fischer article discusses the employment of new educational technologies. Fischer criticizes the use of new technologies without an initial comparison of their effectiveness with traditional technologies. This particular study found students performed about equally well in terms of level of reflection for the themes tested. A student’s preference between traditional writing and blogging for reflective exercises was found to be determined by the student’s prior experience. This study supports the idea that teachers may include blogging as a medium for reflective activities especially for students with prior experience. With the numerous learning and collaboration technologies that are becoming available, it is crucial for teachers to have metrics to compare a new technology with traditional ones. It is probable that employing technologies that are in the ‘peak of inflated expectations” stage may exacerbate the ill effects of using new technologies without due diligence.