Terry’s Blog

As Joan Vinall-Cox said in a recent communication “I think that actually hearing someone’s physical voice affects the way we “hear” their writing voice”. I thinks there is a lot in this. I know I have a much better notion of someone’s ‘telepresence’ if I can put a voice to their writing. This is not new. I hear my old professor Zygmunt Bauman’s voice reading to me when I am reading one of his (numerous) books. When I read colleagues’ emails to me I can hear them too, although they are not always very articulate! I know writing is not the same as speaking but text-based communication, more so in blogs than emails, is a sort of ’say-writing’ to use a phrase coined by, I think, Robin Mason from her research into computer mediated communications in e-learning.

In addition I think that a voice can, sometimes and perhaps not always, add a dimension of explanation that text doesn’t. I am thinking here of the way, for instance, Shakespeare made a bit more sense to me when I heard it spoken than when I tried to understand the text, although this may not be a good example. Some of the sense is conveyed by the voice as well as the words. Also, if a podcast is given to students (i.e. those who missed the lecture, distance learners, or to replace a missing lecture) rather than detailed lecture notes, they have to engage with the content in order to make decisions in their note taking. Making a podcast available is not the passive spoon feeding that is giving a transcript. Podcasts can, given an MP3 player, be listened to on a walk, in the bathroom, whenever you wish

Anyway, these are my thoughts so far. Better probably to look at what has been written by people that know what they are talking about! Brian Lamb, in his blog Abject Learning, has posted an entry Because the revolution’s here - podcasting in education on an article by Gardner Campbell There’s Something in the Air: Podcasting in Education in EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 40, no. 6 (November/December 2005). Brian is obviously very enthusiatic about this article and in conclusion says “Even if don’t you think you care about podcasting, you should read this piece”. There’s Something in the Air: Podcasting in Education is also available as a PDF file.

For those of us new to podcasting and the process of making and publishing them I have found the How to Podcast to be very useful. It covers the whole process from working out objectives, scripting, recording (using the free Audacity utility with video tutorials on editing, mixing in music, exporting etc.) and publishing. Links are provided to all software needed. I still need to find out how to turn CD audio tracks into MP3s.

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