Tech4learning

Liberated Podcasting

I was browsing through the new 2008 edition of Podcasting for Dummiesand noticed mention of a company called LibSyn or Liberated Syndication who offer an all-in-one podcasting service.

The site offers both an easy way to get started with podcasting and a directory of podcasts from other users, although it's worth pointing out that you don't have to allow the whole world to listen to your broadcasts.  Of course, it's worth listening to a few for ideas and for searching out podcasts that might offer the same content as yours.

The podcast creation process - which you can try-out for nothing in their "sandbox" area - is simple:

1. Set-up your podcast by configuring some basic settings.
2. Upload your media files.
3. Post your show, which also sorts out the all-important RSS feed.

You can choose from different templates for your "home page" on the site, which is where you display your podcasts.  Here you can add so-called "Show Notes" where you can describe your podcast - important if you're using podcast episodes as part of a training programme.  The web-page is in the form of a blog, so you can activate comments too - great if you want to encourage debates about your content.

The pricing for their services is very good too.  You can have a basic package for just $5 per month.  This gives you 100MB of space on their servers.  But you never need pay more than $30 per month for 800B.

What I particularly thought was valuable if you are posting a series of podcasts to support a programme was their approach to archiving.  After one month, your podcast episode is moved from what they they call a "fast" server to a slower one.  They argue (not unreasonably) that after a month, anyone who has yet to listen, can wait a bit longer for the download to occur.  Budget-wise, you are only paying for the "high" speed access, so you never actually lose your older episodes - just they take longer to retrieve - and your paid-for storage space is reserved for your very lastest episodes.

The Big Wide World of Web 2.0 in Your Pocket

I've got a number of books on the go at the moment...and too few long train rides in which to finish them...but my latest learning technologies book arrived this week and having gotten over how small it was, compared to the picture on Amazon, I was amazed to see how much content had been fitted onto its small pages and how easy it was to read.

And it's packed full of new information for anyone who is looking to see how they could embed Web 2.0 technologies into their learning solutions.  "Blogs, Wikis, MySpace and More" is big on the "more".

Each chapter starts with a good overview of a handful of the main players in that area.  So in the blogging chapter, space is given over to Blogger; Del.icio.us takes pride of place in the tagging section; whilst Second Life and MySpace lead the virtual worlds and social network chapters.  But at the end of each section, the author lists out a much wider range of alternative players in that area and for me, that's where the true value of this book lies, in revealing a wealth of numerous other providers who could offer services for corporate learning...even it they don't yet know it themselves.

I'll be particularly looking at the chapters on Web 2.0 for education and knowledge, personal management tools (some great collaborative scheduling programs in there) and the wikis and collaboration section.

Blogging Together for Learning Transfer

Between 1994 and 2005, I spent most of my e-learning career focused on how online learning could efficiently and effectively transfer knowledge, provide skills practice and begin to change attitudes.  Throughout this time, I looked for products that got straight to the point, i.e. that minimised the duration between learning something new and putting it into action back on the job.

But since 2005, I've been more concerned with how learning technologies can improve the transfer of learning into the workplace and more importantly, build on the web's superior ability to connect people efficiently and effectively.  After all, for many 1000s of years, learning has been, for the most part, a social experience.  Regardless of how we learned the content, unless it's put into practice and speedily, then the learning opportunity could well have been wasted.

Concurrently, I've mulled over how blogging could be used within a learning environment.  It's not rocket science to determine that blogging's reflective nature should provide a powerful application in the learning world, but up to now, I've felt that the learning curve required meant that blogging was seen as something that "others" did and that required new skills, with another technology learning curve to climb and that was simply too much hard work.  It does take some stamina to keep a blog alive, that's for sure.

I've also thought that having a number of disconnected blogs from each participant was a clumsy way of doing things and made the sharing of best practices more difficult than it should be.  So I was interested to find two solutions from the same vendor that achieve the same goals, but with two different "focuses".

21classes and 21publish offer hosted blogging community sites.  Basically, with both the formula is the same.  Your class (or work group/adult learning set in the case of 21publish) shares a portal home page, that summaries the latest postings from the group members and provides other collaborative sharing/learning features, such as a team blog and the chance for comments to be added to blog entries to create discussions on the issues raised.  Profiles of the members can be presented too, along with messages, news stories and other bulletins from the course facilitator.  It's the ability to easily follow the post-training "journeys" of the other participants that makes the community come alive and fosters greater on-the-job collaboration and shared learning.

A range of moderation and administration features allows those appointed to facilitate the groups full control of the activity on the sites. 

So these sites offer participants and facilitators the chance to easily work on their own blogs, maybe as goal setting devices, in addition to learning follow-up vehicles and action planning and review tools, whilst at the same time contributing to the collective learning of the group.  Just what I thought was needed...and keenly priced too.