My podcast was about the use of digital devices in education. I chose to pursue this topic, as during our class discussions on it, I felt my opinion flowed more easily and I was able to best articulate my opinions on the subject, and I feel my end product was much better than what it would have been had I chosen another topic.
My readings of Zosh et al helped me reach my conclusion that digital devices should be integrated into learning. At first, I was sceptical of any use in childhood education, but when I read in their piece that there can be up to 170 000 different educational apps on just one device, like an iPad, I was honestly dumbfounded, and it caused me to reevaluate my position, and I was influenced to believing that there is a use for digital devices in early childhood. My positions on later stages in childhood were not swayed very much, as I already had a pretty solid base and understanding of what I think is the right way to educate with technology.
When I was creating my own content, I spoke about what I thought, and how I felt on the subject. It really came naturally to me, as technology has always been a part of my life and for as long as I can remember, I’ve always used some form of technology at home, or at school. For the intro music, I searched ‘intro music’ in Soundcloud, via the Creative Commons link.
I have never made a podcast before, so it was a new experience for me. As I am on an iPad rather than a laptop or other computer, I was limited to how I could make my podcast. I decided to record it in sections on the voice memo app on my phone, which I then air dropped to my iPad. After that, I unsuccessfully uploaded the individual pieces onto an iMovie project. Unfortunately, iMovie was also a new app for me, so when I tried to do this, the audio was overlapping, and no matter what I did, the audio wouldn’t stop overlapping. This led to severe frustrations, agony, cursing myself and the iPad. In the end, I settled for doing the whole speech in one take. This wasn’t ideal, as it prevented me from being able to stop and think about what was next. After I had finally done all of this, and gotten through the drama of my own incompetence, I converted the iMovie to mp3 format using the iOS app mymp3. This was the easiest part of the whole assignment, and thankfully, the end was near. A quick upload to SoundCloud was all it took, and the trials and tribulations of my first podcast was over.
Podcasts are a great way of expressing your feelings and opinions, and I really think I would love to start doing them more often, except hopefully in the future I will have more success with whatever application I am using.
Anyway, here it is, I hope you like it.
(Zosh JM, Hirsh-Pasek K, Michnick Golinkoff R, Parish-Morris J. (2016) Learning in the Digital Age: Putting Education Back in Educational Apps for Young Children. In: Tremblay RE, Boivin M, Peters RDeV, eds. Rvachew S, topic ed. Encyclopedia on Early Childhood Development [online]. http://www.child-encyclopedia.com/technology-early-childhood-education/according-experts/learning-digital-age-putting-education-back Accessed May 26, 2019.)
Intro Music by Mr James (CC by 3.0)
Connor’s Reviews 