UPDATED
How many of you out in internet-land thought podcasting was an iPod thing? I sure did, oh so long ago, thought that podcasting=stuff on ipod, but actually its not. According to the guys at MTSU podcasting,
"stands for Portable On Demand Broadcasting. Podcasts were originally audio-only but may now contain still images, video, and chapters identifying major sections or ideas. An iPod is not needed to listen to a Podcast. You can listen to a podcast using any computer connected to the Internet that also has the capability of playing standard MP3 audio files. Once a podcast is downloaded it can be listened to at any time on the computer. Many people also like to copy the podcast to a portable device for playback on the go. Examples of these devises include PDAs (Palm or Pocket PC), iPods, mobile phones, or many other devises that play MP3 files. "
Ipods made podcasting popular because the podcasting technology was streamlined with iTunes. Podcasting has been used for all sorts of things. At State University of New York Fredonia, they conducted a study to see how well students would learn listening to a podcast in place of a live lecture. The test for this experiment was the exam scores for the course. The study found that students listening to podcasts actually, on average, did better than students listening to live lectures.
My favorite use sharing the gospel online via podcast and the like is Mormon Messages.
Here's a podcast that I made: (So apparently my podcast isn't working the way it should, so I'm in the process of trying to fix it.)
Here is the fixed one:
The real origin of the word podcast is fascinating. Does any corporation other than iTunes even promote podcasts, though? I don't know where to get podcasts other than on iTunes.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you think of the SUNYF study? Do you think it was flawed, or do you believe what they report to have observed? If you could get podcasts of your courses rather than attending lecture, would you?
ReplyDeleteAlso, did you listen to your podcast? The audio isn't audible. Are you going to make another? Also, I missed the link to your example of how someone else had used one of these technologies to share the gospel, as per the assignment.
I've done quite a bit of news writing and like many people, have read a lot of news. I've noticed that many times, reporters who have no experience with statistics try to create news out of a particular study. Most reporters will look at the means, and try to infer significances or correlation from the means alone. Unfortunately, the study just represents a sample(s) of the population. Because it is a sample, one can't infer information from the means alone, there has to be a test for significance. Because the reporter doesn't mention whether there was a test for significance, even through there is an average difference between the two groups, it could just be the results that particular sample, while another sample could have students in the live lecture scoring 20 points higher on average. (I hope that made sense).
ReplyDelete