September 15, 2006
People in Attendance: Casey, Randy H., Jim O., Karen S., Heather, Ethan, Diane, Jnan, Laurance, Vicky
MEETING NOTES
Casey shared some of her success with podcasting in a summer Revisions course, as well as some of the challenges she negotiated. Her course materials, including podcasting assignment sheets and resources, can be found on her
website.
For those who are unfamiliar with the term, podcasting is basically this:
You make a sound file, and upload it to a website so that other people can hear it. Over time you keep updating your sound files and other people set up an "RSS feed" so that they always hear your latest sound-work. (RSS stands for real simple syndication.) You can imagine how this works with sites like
NPRCasey did a variation on this, where the students created sound files aimed at persuading different audiences to attend MTU, and then the students housed the sound files on blogs they had set up with
Blogger. It's noteworthy that some of the people in MTU's marketing division are interested in the idea of podcasts as recruitment material.
The students mostly recorded their voices using mikes built into the computers, and then edited the sound with Audacity, which unlike Garage Band is free and works on both Macs and PCs. Some students conducted interviews for the project, and some students used music, which Casey required to be copy-right free, errr Creative Commons liscensed. (What's the difference? Stay tuned for our Intellectual Property TWIT.)
Casey noted that this project generated a lot of buy-in from the students. For example, one student is thinking of using podcasts for his Enterprise program, to keep people updated and recruit sponsors.
And as the one writing this post, I just want to ask: Really, aren't we sick of filling a couple weeks of Revisions with required speeches? Who
isn't bored by the end of all that? Couldn't we benefit from a new way to teach oral rhetoric?
Big thanks to Casey for sharing and being so creative in her teaching. Heather is doing podcasting this term too, so she is another person to talk with.
There is obviously a lot more to say. For example, the issue of grading came up in our Q&A following Casey's presentation, as did a question about how to use podcasting to make the rhetorical issues of voice, audience, and generic convention more concrete for students. We will definitely keep talking about podcasting this year. Thanks.
