Week 4 Articles

Title: Podcasting in Education

Bibliography: Podcasting in Education. Retrieved April 27, 2007, from Apple Web site: http://www.apple.com/education/products/ipod/podcasting.html.

Summary:

This webpage dealt with how an Apple product, the ipod, is being utilized in education. Audio and video files can be delivered over a network via free subscription. Therefore, instructors can tape- or video-record their lectures and make them available to students that were unable to attend or who need the material presented again in order to best retain the information. Instructors are also using podcasts to share best practices with their colleagues. Podcasts are created on Macintosh computers by using the Mac’s free integrated iLife applications. The article specifically suggested GarageBand to create podcasts. Both faculty members and students are using ipods. Podcast files can be attached to blogs as well.

Reaction:

I have heard about podcasts being used in broadcasting before reading this article, but I hadn’t given much thought to using them in education. It may be interesting to take an informal survey of college (or highschool) students to see how many of them already own an ipod. This may be an inexpensive way of utilizing technology in order to deliver educational content to students if they already own the hardware. I also plan to look into the program GarageBand so that I can create a podcast!

Title: The Nontraditional Undergraduate And Distance Learning: Is Higher Education Providing a Portal or Just A Keyhole to Social and Economic Mobility?

Bibliography: Carriuolo, Nancy (2002). The nontraditional undergraduate and distance learning: is higher education providing a portal or just a keyhole to social and economic mobility?. Retrieved April 29, 2007, from LookSmart Web site: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1254/is_6_34/ai_94129286.

Summary:

In this article, the author explored online learning and its ability to advance nontraditional student socio-economically. She critically analyzed the college life of students attending electronic classes not physically visiting classes. She addressed that there is a disagreement in the online learning discourse group. Some researchers say that online students miss out on services available to them on campus counterparts. For example, many schools have librarians that review literature to make certain it is appropriate for academia. The author notes that students completing research via the world wide web do not have this service available to them. On the other side of this discourse are those professionals that believe online learning seems to offer convenient and plentiful opportunities for interaction. e.g. online threaded discussion, email, and electronic chat rooms. The author offers her own experiences as support for those that feel online courses do not provide students ample opportunity to interact with classmates. She provided the example of a classmate in her face-to-face class commenting that she had a classmate mention that she would love to have a suit similar to the one the author wore to class. During this interaction, the author was able to personally speak to her classmate and refer her to the appropriate retailer in the area. The author commented that this exchange would not have taken place if it were an online course, as students do not see each other in person typically. The author also suggests that a relationship between an online student and a professor would be harder to establish and maintain as there would be less opportunity for the student and faculty member to personally interact. The author did mention that proponents of online learning suggest that online faculty members can reach students that don’t learn well from a traditional lecture courses since there is active learning accompanied by continuous feedback and review in a well facilitated online course. Ultimately, she feels that “we should not fool ourselves into thinking that nontraditional undergraduate enrolled in online courses necessarily will enjoy the same type of social and economic access as they might have gained from traditional undergraduate experiences.”

Reaction:

I felt the author really tried to present both sides of the discussion as well as add her own personal experiences to support her points. However, I was sort of confused how she was tying in all of her points to the one addressed in the article title. There was a lot of food for thought in this article, and the author cited the works of many other professionals. I feel that this conversation goes back to the article from week one regarding how human resource managers view the quality of education from online programs. Both articles deal with online education and whether or not the participants will achieve upward movement in socio-economic status.