First Day, and First Podcast!

The material posted to this blog over the course of the next few weeks will represent my learning and thinking processes involved with a graduate seminar at Missouri State University. This seminar is about digital writing, and is intended to provide participants and educators with a wide variety of technological tools to be implemented in their classrooms.

Our first project was creating our very own "podcast." I listen to at least one podcast of some sort almost every day, but until now I have not had any experience with creating one. Working within our assigned writing groups, each of us took turns recording the other participating in a short conversation.

Our prompt for this podcast concerned our feelings surrounding digital writing. Possible inquiries included "What are your thoughts about digital writing? What questions do you have about digital writing? How does digital writing differ from writing with traditional print resources?" and so on.

In our case, my partner and I made note of what question(s) would be asked by the "interviewer" in the podcast, and then took a minute or so to think about how we would answer the question once we started recording. This planning process, short though it was, caused the recording process to proceed much more smoothly and with less intimidation.

The question I referred to in my podcast was one that I had discussed earlier with a different group of my colleagues; "How do we as teachers implement digital writing into our instruction in a way that is meaningful for students while working with relatively few technological resources?"

This project certainly changed the way I think about podcast that I listen to often. Making a podcast and perhaps more importantly making it sound good is a complex and laborious process! I also was made aware of certain mannerisms in my speaking voice. Although these mannerisms might not be as easily noticed by someone listening to me, this is something that I will try to be more aware of in future podcasting endeavors.

You can find the "rough draft" of my podcast here.

Some time later, I went back and made a second podcast focusing on one aspect of the previous podcast. This draft focuses on the use of technology as a means of making students' thinking more visible to them. You can listen to/view the second podcast below.

Obviously, I've experimented with different ways of uploading and embedding the podcast. You'll also notice that I've attempted to add some music to the beginning and end of the recording. Covering this process was extremely frustrating for me at times; there were several occasions when I would be absolutely certain that I had the answer to a particular problem, but would soon after discover that I hadn't made nearly as much progress as I had thought. For this reason, I view the building of this podcast as a rich and valuable learning experience.