Podcast Review

Soukhanov, Denis. (Producer). (2011, April 20). The Pros and Cons of Online Learning: e-Learning Today TV [Audio podcast]. Retrieved from http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/edtech-tools-e-learning-today/id363273990

This podcast as a series provides an overview of information concerning resources, articles, news, and apps for teachers of K-12 students. In this particular episode, Lauren Grossberg introduced an online resource called storytimeforme.com, a free website that customizes stories for younger children to read along with. Lina Gonzalez summarized an article about the pros and cons of online learning; the pros being cost effectiveness, a possible alternative to traditional education delivery, flexibility, and the ability to offer additional electives or make up classes to students. The only con mentioned was that the quality of the time spent in eLearning environments was generally not as productive as time spent in traditional classrooms. Grossberg then introduced several apps that teachers could use in the classroom that allowed children to do picture searches, read random facts, and create their own monster characters. Gonzalez concluded the episode by describing a school where free classes were being offered to parents so they could learn and be empowered to support their younger students with schoolwork challenges at home.

I want apply this information by implementing customizable story sites that creative writing students could use to analyze basic elements of writing craft. I also enjoyed how the news report depicted a school helping to build a community around its students; this communal inclusion in the learning process is an element I would like to embrace in my teaching and in my courses by providing conversation topics or other materials that eLearners could take beyond the virtual classroom to engage with their face-to-face contacts who aren’t in the course but could still provide intrinsically productive discussion and a sense of real life application for the students.

Bickford, Alison. (Producer). (2011, June, 24). E-Learning Academy: #13 E-Learning Instructional Design Approaches [Audio podcast]. Retrieved from http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/e-learning-academy/id388852745

In this podcast, Alison Bickford introduced five approaches to instructional design for adult eLearning courses. Initially, Bickford suggested that educational interaction requires more than the click and reveal progression design of earlier online courses. A lot of eLearning courses for adults are stuck in a design that’s linear, content-heavy, and doesn’t allow for student control over the material when what adult learners are looking for is relevancy, application, practical learning outcomes, and take away materials. In order to better design a course for adult learners, instructional designers should differentiate between prescriptive “just in case” information and performance-enabling “just in time” scenarios, giving the learners appropriate interactions with each kind of information. Courses should also be organization-specific and imitate real life situations applicable to those organizations. Games can be incorporated into the instructional design to make important content memorable. Games can also play a role in constructing payoffs for learners via scoring systems. Adult learners respond well when they know that what they are learning either provides a gain or helps them to avoid undesirable consequences, and instructional designers should consider that when structuring a course.

I want to apply information from this podcast into my course by considering it a priority to clearly organize and demonstrate the application of course content to tangible learning outcomes. I would also like to develop a basic game, maybe through Gamemaker Lite, that would help students develop creative writing skills. Games could focus on finding examples of alliteration and assonance in different difficulty levels of text or having graphics and music of various tones presented to participants for them to write to; the possibilities are numerous and exciting. I also want to take the time to not only articulate the benefits of creative writing skills, but also the consequences that skillful writing can help students avoid; previously, consequences where a side of motivation I hadn’t considered much before this podcast.