Podcasts: Science education or technology focus?

Do you believe that technology is to support education?

Do you really believe it?

Listen to a student

“I created a planet podcast. It took four days (1 for content, 1 for planning the podcast and 2 days in the lab). Each of us created a podcast about the planets or other parts of the galaxy. We created and posted them. I did not listen to any other students’ podcasts.”

I listened to his podcast. It contain the same facts found in any science book or encyclopedia.

Was this a lesson in Science standards or in technology? 25% of the time was on the content and 75% was on the technology.

Did the teacher focus on academics or on technology? What do you focus on?

3 Responses to “Podcasts: Science education or technology focus?”

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1 Mathew June 28, 2007 at 5:33 pm

It sounds like this lesson focused more on technology than on content. In my second grade classroom, we spent three weeks researching animal camouflage and creating a written report. Then, from those reports, students created very short reports to be recorded and set to images on the computer (which took about four hours (2 hours on two days). The ratio of content to technology was a little more efficient but I would argue that the time spent on the technology wasn’t a waste because of the higher level thinking involved in deciding on which content is most important and how to illustrate those concepts. I’m not sure if the above example is an audio or video podcast. Here’s a link to final films:
http://www.needleworkspictures.com/vic/We%20See%20Animals%20Hiding.html

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2 hgtuttle June 28, 2007 at 10:01 pm

Mathew,
Thanks for your example. I think that higher level thinking is critical. I would hope that they show it in their content. If they have learned the content, then the time spent on the technology is time on the technology. If in doing the technology, they come to some new level of thinking about the content, then the technology serves as a powerful tool.
Harry

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3 Beth June 29, 2007 at 12:46 am

While I agree that too often educators get caught up in a new trend (podcasts, for example) and may shift their focus on teaching the technology rather than teaching the content, I think that one thing we need to keep in mind is the learning curve with new tools for demonstrating knowledge. It may have taken longer to create the podcast than the time it took to investigate the content, but will that decrease the more often a learning/teaching/presentation tool is used? When I think about the first time I made a PowerPoint presentation and the time it took me to insert graphics, add sound, create a custom animation, etc I know that it was greater than the time it took me to research the material that I was presenting on. However, as I became more comfortable with the tool (PPT) I was able to use it to focus on the content examined within the tool. Hopefully this will be the case with this student and his use of podcasts as a learning medium will increase. Just my 2 cents!
Beth

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