What is the educational value of podcasting?
It is not unusual that one of the gurus of podcasting in this country is Tod Maffin, who is also an energetic broadcaster on CBC. The links between radio and podcasting are tight. Podcasting is essentially communication from one to many. It embodies the same principles of radio, and the same production values are leaking from radio into podcasting. The obvious differences are that radio is broadcast over the public airwaves, requires licensing, and is bound to time and place, while anyone, anywhere, at anytime can create and make available a podcast, and anyone, anywhere, and at anytime can listen.
So what then is the educational value of podcasting that radio has not delivered? (At least not delivered in this country - radio in many rural and developing environments is used to deliver portions of educational programming) I’m worried that podcasting will be used as substitute lectures and that those who don’t want to change their teaching approaches with the change of technology will latch on to podcasting as a convenient and comfortable way to continue the status quo: Listen to my podcast/lecture and do the assignment. Where is the learner engagement? where is the interaction? the only thing podcasting delivers here is accessiblity.
However, if podcasts are strategically integrated into an engaging learning design, they can be a wonderful way to introduce multiple voices (both literally and figuratively) to the learner.They provide an alternative medium from the dominance of text to expressing ideas and appeal to the aural-oriented learner.
Like any technology that we pull into our learning spaces, we need to interrogate it for its educational value and get over its cool factor
