podscast ramblings

Warning – whine ahead.

This week’s experience brought home to me that I am so NOT an auditory learner. LOL

To make matters worse, I was really frustrated in my efforts to work with this week’s technology. I spent hours playing with a borrowed iPod and a generic mp3 player, and finally managed to listen to only a couple of podcasts on them. The inexpensive mp3 player didn’t recognize most of the files I converted using iTunes (although I used the identical method for all of them) and the iPod alternated between working and not working – it’s been flaky for months, according to its owner.

When I was frustrated with the players, I wondered how else I could play them, so they would still be portable. My cell phone? A CD? Ha, not so fast. These files are huge. Makes one appreciate the technology improvements that are embodied in these little handheld devices, but, the bottom line was, I didn’t come up with any good alternatives.

So, I got lucky towards the end of the week, the iPod decided to work again, and I listened to a couple of long podcasts on it. I listened while exercising, cooking dinner, driving the car (this one worried me a bit, but it was sort of just like listening to the radio – except when I had to periodically yank the earbuds out because the volume increased suddenly in the student podcasts.) But, in general, it was nice. I can see how people get hooked. However, I certainly wasn’t listening with my full attention.

I listened to the rest of the podcasts directly from the computer – a far cry from the “take this podcast with you wherever you go” picture portrayed in this week’s readings. Overall, I feel as if I invested a lot of time, with poor (or at least, variable) return. Not sure I couldn’t have gotten the information other ways better and faster. Then again, maybe that’s the old non-auditory learner thing at work.

I took an informal survey of the handful of people in my life who use iPods & mp3 players regularly. All of them do not update them frequently. They (or someone else in their family) set them up periodically with new playlists, and off they go. When the player doesn’t work, they leave them alone for awhile, and hope for the best. Sometimes they work later, sometimes not. Not very comprehensive or scientific study, I admit, but it makes me wonder about how many students really would/could use this technology for educational purposes, and how much teachers can rely on it. It would seem that if you were to plan a lesson around it, you would have to have a good backup plan!

For some of my graduate courses in the online MLIS program, teachers have provided audio components in powerpoint presentations, and/or screencasts to demonstrate tricky technical maneuverings. Have they added value? Absolutely. Have they taken a lot more time to work through than a purely written treatment of the subject? Definitely. I think that, as educators, we have to be conscious of the fact that these tools may present a lot of technical obstacles, plus be aware of the time involvement on the student’s end. That’s not to say don’t use them, but use them judiciously.

me + blog = ?

This is my first foray into blog-land, and I must admit to feeling more than a bit self-conscious. I am not new to distance learning, this being my eighth LIS graduate course online. The distance learning experience has been much more intense than I imagined it would be. I've been amazed at the depth into which we can delve into topics, the emotions that can surface as people passionately debate, and the level of sharing that can occur - sometimes moreso than in a face-to-face class.

I am, however, a muller and a polisher, which perhaps lends itself more to message threads, where one can - and I do - revise endlessly before "publishing". My sense is that blogging is more off-the-cuff, perhaps more like a casual discussion than a carefully worded comment. I'm just not used to the idea of my conversations appear online, for anyone else to read! Perhaps I will become more comfortable with the concept as the weeks go by.

It's not that I'm not a reflective practitioner, as they say. Perhaps I reflect too much! Regardless, I wonder why anyone would want to read my ramblings, or would have the time to do so. I guess I fall into the category of those who would prefer to ignore blogs, as Will Richardson says, in our textbook, because of the difficulty in assessing the reliability of the information therein (even at the risk of missing some important ideas).

However, information literacy education is near and dear to my heart, one of the primary reasons I want to work in a school library. It has become abundantly clear to me in reading Richardson that the world our students do - and will - live in is markedly different from the one I grew up in, which means they will need to become expert at dealing with Too Much Information. So I can't really keep my head in the sand about blogs any longer. As Richardson says, "there is no better way to understand the impact of the Read/Write Web than by becoming a part of it." (p. 40)