Teaching Comparative

Podcasts

Jim Lerch who teaches at the American School of Yaounde in Cameroon, sent the AP EDG a great suggestion about finding podcasts in iTunes.

I have suggested [here] looking at YouTube for video images connected to the countries you're teaching about, but I hadn't thought about looking for audio as well.

Wikipedia defines podcast as "a media file that is distributed over the Internet... for playback on mobile devices and personal computers." (As far as I know, that's a valid definition.) Note, that in spite of the name "podcast" you don't need an iPod to use these "media files." You can download them to a computer and listen to them.

iTunes is one bit of software you can use to access and playback music and podcasts. If you don't have iTunes software, it's a free download at the Apple Store, and it's available for PCs and Macs. I'm sure there is other software you can use, but I'm a clueless rookie on this topic. Tell us if you know more.

When you use the software and open the iTunes online store, you'll find a catalog of available Podcasts. The News and Politics catalog at the iTunes store includes Podcasts from a wide variety of mainstream media sources and at least two Democratic presidential candidates.

There are other sources as well. National Public Radio has it's own catalog of podcasts, as does CNN, the the New York Times, BBC News, Yahoo!, and many more organizations. Search the Internet with your favorite search engine to find them.

Jim mentioned he'd found Podcasts of

• NPR's Fresh Air for February 1, 2007, which is "an interesting interview with Michael Specter, who just wrote an article for the New Yorker called Kremlin Inc.; Why are Vladimir Putin's Opponents Dying?"
  
  
• The Changing World from BBC and PRI  has two good podcasts; both of them are in two parts.  The first one is on macho men.  It compares macho men in Nigeria and Mexico.  It is very interesting and I think it will be of high interest to students.  
  
  
• The Changing World also has a two-part podcast on Iran.
  
  
• The Economist has podcasts that are in the 5-10 minute range that cover broad issues concerning Britain, China and Mexico.  For the amount of time they take in class, they are well worth the time.  
  
  
• Finally, the Council on Foreign Relations has a podcast in which Senior Fellow for Middle East Studies Ray Takeyh discusses his new book, Hidden Iran: Paradox and Power in the Islamic Republic.

As Jim suggested, the short, specific topic items probably have the most potential for use in class. Play a clip, discuss, ask questions. A report might be a prompt for a writing exercise.

And, all the ones I looked at (or should say listened to) are free except for some of the Times Select items from the New York Times.

In fact, this might suggest an alternative to the "clip an article from the newspaper and write about it for the class" assignment. What if students were assigned to find a Podcast related to each week's topics, bring it to class, play it, and then lead a discussion or answer questions about it?

Or even better, the students could produce their own podcast using audio bites from the original that they are reporting on. And, what if two groups produce podcasts on the same source? Would they represent the ideas in the original identically? Could the class analyze the differences?

Oh, the possibilities of technology. Use them.

Thanks, Jim.

---

Labels: pedagogy podcasts

posted by Ken Wedding @ 6:53 AM