Deadtime learning:Mobile technology can be facilitate learning at times and in places that would otherwise be wasted:the commuting studentthose who are otherwise displaced, through the introduction. It recognises the complex student demographics of the twenty first century and the complex lives that many students lead as they work to pay their way through undergraduate study or as they study whilst making their ways through the post-graduate world of work.
when students listen to lecture recordings they tend to do so using a PC, and usually at home.
Cebeci and Tekdal (2006) : basic advantage of podcasting is its capacity to enable "anywhere or anytime mobile learning.”Salmon and Nie (2008) : students find it difficult to concentrate whilst mobileBell et al. (2007) frustrated at the limited vision for the educational use of podcasting. They suggest STILL TEACHER CENTRED: news and updates, answering questions sent in (for example by email), and/or give general feedback to students. Another possibility would be to highlight the key points you stated in class and have extended discussion about them, and/or conducting interviews with external people adding or reinforcing the material addressed. Podcasts [are] also a way of providing hands-free instructions to students conducting laboratory work or using different computer programs." ,
Several authors, including Parsons et al. (2009) and Copley (2007), have noted that the value of recorded lectures is limited as a teaching method, though in some cases there may be benefits for the learner as a revision aid. This acknowledgement signals where the real potential lies: away from the push of the teacher towards the learner’s control of the medium.
How audio can be used meaningfully and effectively to not only bring active forms of learning to situations that are otherwise unproductive, but to support learning beyond what are understood to be education’s formal and traditional academic environments and methods in an engaging learner-centred curriculum?
For learners, teachers and their institutions, the way ahead in considering audio and podcasting is inevitably obscured by their previous experiences of education. McLuhan and Fiore (1967, pp.74-75) describe this problem with evaluating the potential of technology as looking “at the present through the rear-view mirror;” a tendency to march backwards into the futureThe familiar paradigm for teaching and learning, however, is being disrupted by external factors, including government drivers and ready access to new ubiquitous and pervasive technology (Kukulska-Hulme and Traxler 2005).
Addressing student diversity creatively
The Learning Literacies in the Digital Age (JISC 2009) highlighted how the nature of work, learning and knowledge is changing, as is the texture of social life and literacy practices. It suggests education needs to address this change to ensure that the UK economy is not hampered by "a lack of high-level skills and a dearth of future capacity... The future demands skilled, digitally-aware learners with the capacity to participate in learning throughout their life, using technologies of their own choosing"
education should manage its disruption through innovative development.Disruption is often reported as being problematic, yet disruptiveness has two sides to it: one that undermines the status quo and one that drives innovation.
Education’s challenge: recognise change and innovate Towards better experience of being at university better than before. Needs simple and effective ways of doing this that are easy to implement, with benefits that are transparent to all involved.
The producersThe literature on podcasting, discussed in Middleton (2009), is split between the idea of educational podcasting as a teaching space and as a learning space. Learner-production is just one way in which podcasting can be used in a learner-centred curriculum. Cobcroftet al. (2006, p5) discuss how learners can be "empowered to undertake user-led education" by using audio to involve their "peers and communities within and beyond the classroom."
recognising formal, semi-formal and informal spaces and experiencePicking up on Conoleet al.'s keywords (2008), voices are pervasive, personal, niche adaptive, organised, transferable, active in different ways according to time and space, adaptable to changing working patterns and, potentially, easy to integrate. As learners, teachers, experts and publics, our voices and behaviours are innately adaptable, adjusting naturally and effectively to context. In a project conducted at Sheffield Hallam University over one academic year (Nortcliffe and Middleton 2009a), students were given MP3 recorders and asked to use them in any way that they would find useful to aid their learning and to periodically report back to share their experience with the other participants. Once the students had been challenged to think creatively about how they might make use of the devices, it emerged that they discovered and captured useful learning voices in many varied situations, most of which did not directly connect with a formal view of university education. These uses were loosely categorised as,formal: notes from the planned curriculum;semi-formal: unplanned notes from the formal curriculum; and,informal: notes from beyond the formal curriculum. (ibid)