As a psychology instructor and podcaster I'd like to comment on this as well. I first used podcasting for an online course last year and I used them pretty much the way many profs think of using them: as a convenient way to deliver audio lectures. While helpful, neither I nor my students thought of the podcasts as particularly noteworthy.
Now that I have a regular, non course related podcast (www.thepsychfiles.com) I'm beginning to see better how the capabilities of ipods and podcasting itself can be used in more pedagogically sound ways. For example, in my latest podcast I walk through the stages of Erikson's eight stages of life. As I do so, I recorded interviews with people who were in each of those stages to see how their thoughts matched up with Erikson's descriptions of the challenges of that stage. If I were teaching a course right now I would have my students do this instead. An assignment might be to do this interviewing themselves (using an ipod with an inexpensive audio recording device attached) and analyze what they find in these recordings. Then they could put together the parts of the audio (using perhaps Audacity) into an audio presentation that could be shared with others in the class. This could also become part of their portfolio. As others have said, the technology itself is not going to cause a revolution in education, it is the creative ways we put that technology to use, and how we challenge out students to use, that can make it an effective learning device. Michael Britt The Psych Files www.thepsychfiles.com --- To make changes to your subscription go to: http://acsun.frostburg.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=tips&text_mode=0&lang=english
