bobCast #6 June 6th, 2005 Using Podcasting as a Teaching Tool

How can podcasting be used as an educational tool? As discussed earlier, one of the biggest advantages of podcasting is the ability to download a podcast file and listen to it in a mobile fashion. This means that the student be use the file in any place they happen to be. This could work very well for the community college becasue the basic community college student is by nature very mobile. Many students have a long cummute just to get to the classroom. They then rush off to work, which means more time in the car or on the bus. The mobile MP3 player can go right along with them, and offer them entertainment or education. In the car, and FM modulator such as the Griffin iTrip for the iPod will allowthem the play their device through the car radio. They can listen to the class lecture that their professor has posted as a podcast on his or her website, or listen to a test review that might help them pass the test that they will take later in the day.
I teach a class entitled Introduction To Speech Communication in which the students are exposed to the various elements of speech communication including group discussion. We do an excersice called the Financial Aid Project. In this project, the class divides up into small groups of around five to seven students, and they must choose two people from a list to recieve scholarships that will allow them to complete four years of college that they might not otherwise be able to do on their own. Do they pick the person who has worked to achieve high scolastic standards, the football player or cheerleader or the person from a third world country who will go back to his country after school and help his people produce more much needed food?
In this bobCast, I recorded the presentation of each group and I have included the highlights from the presentations. When you listen to the reasons why they choose the people you start to get an insight into the thinking and feelings of the community college student.

bobCast #5 with Mary Diaz and David Shulman

In this week's bobCast, we meet with Professor Mary Diaz and with David Shulman thrown in for good measure. The "IT War Room" (a.k.a. The Roasted Bean) is the scene. We discuss the up coming League of Innoviation's CIT Conference to be held Oct. 2005 in Dallas, TX. Mary, David and I have been invited to present at the League on new upcomming technologies such as "podcasting", and explore some of the technologies making news, which may soon find their way into our classrooms as teaching tools. One of these technologies is the TabletPC which Mary uses in her WebCT e-learning classes to teach writing to her ESL students. Mary also trains faculty on the use of TabletPCs through her "Tablet Talk" sessions which she has held on each of the BCC campuses. As a sideline, Mary trains faculty in the use of WAM a software program used by the College to build websites for our College's Intranet. We hope you find this session of the bobCast interesting, and we hope you will keep coming back for more. And don't forget to tell "all" of your friends!

bobCast #4 with David Shulman

In this podcast I speak with David Shulman who is the Director of Instructional Technology at the college. David oversees many of the projects that one sees when they visit the Instructional Technology website and designs and builds many of the webpages found there. We met in the secret headquaters of the Instructional Technology Department in downtown Davie, FL.

Today we discuss:

The difference between IT1 and IT2.
The plans for the summer IT workshops.
The role of mobile technology at the college.
The up coming League Of Innovation CIT in the fall.
And most important of all- Why David talks the way he does.

Special Note: Several people have told me that they have not listened to the bobCast because they do not have an iPod. While the "pod" part of the word "podcast comes from the word "iPod", you do not have to use an iPod to listen to a podcast. The podcast file is just a simple mp3 file just like the music files that one can download from the internet. You can play the file in Windows Media player, itunes, Music Match or any program that allows for the playing of an mp3 file.

To save the file to your computer just right click the file name, if you are using a Windows computer, and choose "save target as" from the menu. You can then choose where you want to save to file and play the file by just clicking on the file name. It will open in you default music player, or you can "right click" and choose to play it in another player from the list provided on the screen.

Happy listening!

bobCast on e-learning

This is the third podcast in the series for the "bobCast". In this podcast I interview Ms. Sharon Parker,the Director of Flexible Learning at Broward Community College, and Professor Sharon Rifkin, who serves as the lead faculty associate for e-learning at the college, and also teaches as a faculty member in the Department of Education at BCC South Campus. These two ladies have both worked hard to establish Broward Community College as a leader in the field of e-learning, and they explain first-hand how they did it and where they think it will go in the future. E-learning is one of the areas served by the Department Instruction Technology.
The RSS feed address for the podcast is http://www1.broward.edu/~rbuford/podcasts/feed.xml

You can set this up for a regular download by copying the above URL into your podcatcher program (such as "ipodder"). You can download ipodder for free at http://www.ipodder.org.
Additional podcast software can be found at http://www.podcastalley.com
While you are at Podcast Alley, show your support of this podcast to vote for the bobCast as your podcast choicw of the month.
Please let me know how you like it by your comments to this blog. Or you can drop me an e-mail at rbuford@broward.edu.

bobCast - My 2nd Podcast

Welcome to my second podcast. This is second podcast in the series for the "bobCast". In this podcast I try to describe what a podcast is and how it can be used by the faculty member or student. I talk about how the idea of podcasting got started and take an overview at how setup a podcast.
The address for the podcast is http://www1.broward.edu/~rbuford/podcasts/feed.xmlYou can set this up for a regular download by copying the above URL into your podcatcher program (such as "ipodder"). You can download ipodder for free at http://www.ipodder.org.
Please let me know how you like it by your comments to this blog.

Buford's --- First Real "bobCast"--

Welcome to my first real podcast. In this podcast I will welcome listeners to the podcast and explain what I will be doing in the future. This was recorded on a handheld iPod and I hope that the sound quality will improve as I learn what to do and how to do it. Anyway, I hope you enjoy my first effort and come back each week.

The address for the podcast is http://www1.broward.edu/~rbuford/podcasts/feed.xmlYou can set this up for a regular download by copying the above URL into your podcatcher program (such as "ipodder"). You can download ipodder for free at http://www.ipodder.org.

Please let me know how you like it by your comments to this blog.