Podcasting and Screencasting:
Education in Your Pocket

INTRODUCTION
For the fall semester of 2006, the Department of Instructional Technology at McDaniel College is proposing to work with the Department of Education to pilot the use of podcasting and screencasting in the classroom. Simply defined, podcasting is making audio content available on the Web in such a way that it can be automatically delivered to users' computers, PDAs, mobile phones, iPods, or other MP3 players.  Screencasting essentially uses the same broadcast processes, but slightly different development technologies, since it is the conversion of PowerPoint presentations (or other computer activity) into video for broadcast to various mobile players. The initiative is not just for faculty to use screencasting to deliver instruction, but for students to use podcasting to demonstrate learning and participate in creation of class content. 
EDU 1113: Technology in Education has been selected to pilot the initiative.  It will be a "blended" class that meets regularly face-to-face, but also has a strong online component on Blackboard.  The students will be first year students.  The content of the course is technology in education.  The course fits into the Education Department's curriculum by supporting one of the department’s key outcomes--students will be able to "demonstrate and promote the strategic use of technology to enhance learning" (McDaniel College, n.d.).  
Bates & Poole (2003) offer a convenient framework for selecting and using technology (pp. 78-105).  This framework, called the SECTIONS model, consists of eight separate categories identified by the keywords: Students, Ease of use, Costs, Teaching and learning, Interactivity, Organizational issues, Novelty, and Speed.  Each section provides key questions for consideration when selecting and using technology for education. The point of this paper is to use that framework to help determine (a) if the selection of technology is appropriate and (b) if the initiative itself is appropriate.

S.E.C.T.I.O.N.S.  ANALYSIS
Students.   
Bates & Poole identify three key issues in the “Students” section: (1) student demographics, (2) access, and (3) student learning differences (pp. 80-87).  
Downes (2005) notes how Internet users are increasingly changing and refers to an unsigned article on the Apple Web site (n.d.) which offers a table contrasting “digital native” students with “digital immigrant” teachers. Since the information is especially germane to all three key issues in this section, it is reproduced below.
Digital Native Learners	Digital Immigrant Teachers	
Prefer receiving information quickly from multiple multimedia sources	Prefer slow and controlled release of information from limited sources.	
Prefer parallel processing and multitasking.	Prefer singular processing and single or limited tasking.	
Prefer processing pictures, sounds, and video before text.	Prefer to provide text before pictures, sounds, and video.	
Prefer random access to hyperlinked multimedia information.	Prefer to provide information linearly, logically, and sequentially.	
Prefer to interact/network simultaneously with many others.	Prefer students to work independently rather than network and interact.	
Prefer to learn “just-in-time.”	Prefer to teach “just-in-case” (it’s on the exam).	
Prefer instant gratification and instant rewards.	Prefer deferred gratification and deferred rewards.	
Prefer learning that is relevant, instantly useful, and fun.	Prefer to teach to the curriculum guide and standardized tests.	

For podcasting, access should be no problem, since McDaniel offers broadband and wireless capability throughout the campus to all students.  In terms of demographics, the student population of the pilot program is the “digital native”--the 18 year old (with a laptop, mobile phone, and iPod) just entering college and interested in technology.  Since the content of the class will actually deal with issues of student learning differences, interactivity, and use of technology, it seems especially appropriate that students will be required to examine those issues by using those very technologies.  

Ease of Use and reliability. 
Moore & Kearsley (2005) warn that one of the dangers of emerging technologies is competing media formats (p. 96), but it seems safe to assume that the mp3 format, with its (relatively) long history, and Apple’s iTunes (standard podcasting player), with its millions of users, meet all appropriate standards for ease of use and reliability.  It may be slightly more difficult for those who want to download podcasts on their mobile phones, but additional “pod catching” software is freely available for many mobile phones and PDAs, as well as computers. It is a different issue when moving from receiving podcasts to actually developing and broadcasting them. In the pilot program, students will be asked only to produce podcasts; the instructor, however, will develop instructional components (narrated PowerPoint presentations) and broadcast them for download.  
On one level, all the hardware it takes to create a podcast is a computer, but McDaniel is following the recommendations of Georhegan & Klass (2005) and purchasing the following equipment:

Podcasting Hardware (Students and Faculty)	
2 Microphones	Audio Technica AT2020 Studio Cardioid Condenser	$100.00ea 	
2 Digital Recorders	Olympus WS-100 64 MB Digital Voice Recorder with USB Interface	$100.00ea	
Mixer	Alexis MultiMix 8 USB Mixed	$150.00	
Podcasting Software (Students and Faculty)	
Audio Editing	Audacity 	free	
Audio encoding	Quick Time Pro	$30.00	
Podcatching/playback	iTunes	free	
Screencasting Software (Faculty)	
Conversion of screens/PowerPoints for podcast	Camtasia	$150.00	

The hardware and software has been selected with ease of use as a primary consideration.  For instance, both the Alexis Mixer and the Olympus recorder have USB connections and so require no additional audio input/outputs to the computer. Audacity is the primary audio editing software on McDaniel’s campus, already installed in three campus computer labs. 

Costs.
 Costs have been carefully considered and are reflected in the table above. Most students will be able to podcast using existing hardware (personal computers) and free or low-cost software.  Software for screencasting (Camtasia and QuickTime Pro) is modest (under $150) and will be made available to faculty through McDaniel’s IT budget. Templates in XML for RSS feeds (students would just copy/paste them) are freely available at no cost. This technology allows for students to “subscribe” to faculty broadcasts and, if they wish, to replay the lessons on their computers, iPods, or phones.

Teaching and Learning
According to Bates & Poole, one of the major trends in higher education today is “the move toward more learner-centered teaching” (p. 43). Under the influence of new learning theories and constructivist approaches to teaching and learning, pedagogy in general appears to be shifting from a focus on the skills of the teacher to a focus on the needs (and outcomes) of the student.  Some educators argue that learners should be treated as co-creators in the process of teaching and learning (for overviews of learner-centered teaching, see Marzano, 1992, Weimer, 2002, Land & Hannafin, 2000, Palloff & Pratt, 2003; for overview of constructivism, see Jonassen, 1999, and Tam, 2000).  On the one hand, faculty developing screencasts in order to deliver instruction can be seen as supporting old pedagogies focusing on the skills of the teacher.  On the other hand, providing (a) instructional components that can downloaded on multiple mobile players and (b) tools and opportunities for students to solve problems and demonstrate learning by developing and broadcasting their own “content” is, it can be argued, a way of moving to more student-centered learning and placing much of the control of learning itself into the hands of the learner.  

Interactivity. 
Bates & Poole point out that most recent theories of learning suggest that “for learning to be effective, it needs to be active; in other words, the learner must respond in some way to the learning material (p. 98).  Anderson (2003) demonstrates how current technologies provide opportunities for at least six different types of interaction.  They include interactions between (1) student-teacher, (2) student-student, (3) student-content, (4) teacher-content, (5) teacher-teacher, and (6) content-content. 
A class in which the instructor offers instructional podcasts for broadcast to the learning community and designs activities and assessments that require students to work together in order to produce and broadcast audio projects (interviews, conversations, content) meets all six types of interactions (using XML templates to produce RSS feeds will produce content that updates/interacts with itself).

Organizational Issues. 
McDaniel College accepts the observation by Rumble (2000) that learner support should take advantage of technology to help create learner support communities. To that end, the student intranet will support blogs, podcasts, and offer just-in-time support from the Department of Instructional Technology and a group of student “technology” mentors. These mentors can participate in online as well as F2F support.  Additionally, support materials (such as RSS feeds) will be made available on the student intranet.  For students who wish to check out higher-end microphones and/or portable digital recorders, request forms will also be online. Audacity, QuickTime Pro, and a podcatcher will be installed on all computers in the student lab, but also will be available for download from the student intranet. 

Novelty
Podcasting is still a recent enough phenomenon to qualify as “novel,” yet it is not so new that there is not adequate software, support, and successful processes available for users.  Screencasting, on the other hand, is new enough to count as cutting edge.  Certainly most students have not yet downloaded audio/visual lectures and played them on their iPods, mobile phones, or computers.  By the end of fall 2006, at least 30 McDaniel students will have.    

Speed
Bates and Poole use this category to ask questions about how easy is it to change or update teaching materials. These are difficult questions to answer, since the individual user’s skills, ability, and comfort level with the technology primarily determines the extent to which he or she can (or desire to) update. On the other hand, podcasts and screencasts may not be considered something that should be (or needs to be) updated; that is, their primary function could be seen as “conversations”--components of content that are, in themselves, updates to content and collaboration.   

CONCLUSION 
	Just a brief consideration of each component of Bates & Poole’s model of technology selection and use suggests that McDaniel’s podcasting/screencasting initiative is (a) appropriate regarding student demographics, access, and learning styles, (b) reasonable in terms of ease of use and reliability, (c) relatively inexpensive, (d) supportive of student-centered pedagogies, (e) extremely interactive, (f) supported by McDaniel, (g) novel enough to meet the “cool” factor, and (h) easy enough to update, but really a technology that itself supports constant updating of learning content and learning outcomes. 

REFERENCES

Apple. (n.d.). Digital tools for digital kids. Retrieved, May 1, 2006 from: http://www.apple.com/au/education/digitalkids/disconnect/landscape.html
Anderson, T. (2003). Modes of interaction in distance education: Recent developments and research questions. In M.G. Moore & W.G Anderson (Eds.), Handbook of distance education (pp-129-144). Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Bates, A.W., & Poole, G. (2003). Effective teaching with technology in higher education: Foundations for success. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Downes, S. (2005), E-learning 2.0. E-Learn Magazine. ACM. Inc. Retrieved April 30, 2006 from http://elearnmag.org/subpage.cfm?section=articles&article=29-1
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Jonassen, D. (1999). Designing constructivist learning environments.  In C. Reigeluth (Ed.), Instructional design theories and models. Vol. II (pp. 215-238). Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Land, S.M., & Hannafin, M.J. (2000). Student-centered learning environments.  In D.H. Jonassen and S. Land (Eds.), Theoretical foundations of learning environments (pp. 1-23). Malwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Marzano, R.J. (1992). A different kind of classroom: Teaching with dimensions of learning. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. 
McDaniel College Education Department. (n.d.). Conceptual framework. Retrieved April 30, 2006 from http://www.mcdaniel.edu/education/NCATE/concept.htm
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Tam, M. (2000). Constructivism, instructional design, and technology:  Implications for transforming distance learning. Educational Technology & Society, 3 (2), 50-60. 
Weimer, M. (2002). Learner-centered teaching: Five key changes to practice. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.