Professor Peterson's Podcast Proselytizing

Be sure, if you have time, to register for SLIS's own Gabriel Peterson's March 2 talk entitled "Introduction to Classroom Podcasting" at the Center for University Teaching and Learning. But fret not if you can't make it in person because, naturally, he'll be podcasting it.

Student Podcasting

In an extraordinarily interesting piece published recently in the The Chronicle, John M. Lang wrote a piece virtues and defects of student podcasting. I confess the idea hadn't occurred to me, perhaps because of the time commitment involved, but it's an intriguing possibility, particularly for distance ed. Lang tried it out, I gather in a face-to-face class, and made it a single assignment, which makes sense. It worked reasonably well the first time around except that  (a) the fact that the students all reflected on the same reading led to a certain same-y quality in the podcasts and (b) students had not been made aware enough of the elements of a quality podcast. Even so, it seemed to me that this might be another way of shrinking distance between students--especially if done early in the term--in a DE class. This might be particularly useful with younger/tech savvier groups.