Archive for February 21st, 2007
Listening to Podcasts: a whole new mode of learning?
Subconsciously I have known for several months that my listening to selected technology and general interest podcasts on my iPod was teaching me something. I probably average about 60-90 minutes listening a day, mainly while driving and riding my bike. In whole or in part I must get through about 25 podcasts a week.
Today I was listening to one of my favourite podcasters, Jon Udell, who happened to be a guest on a Technometria podcast from Phil Windley (Assoc Prof in Computer Science at BYU) and co-host Scott Lemon. In amongst the 1 hour 15 minutes running time (not for the faint hearted) are some erudite thoughts from Jon, one of which really struck a chord with me. Jon also listens to podcasts on his MP3 player while riding and jogging. He made the observation that podcast listening was a completely new mode of learning. The listener is completely absorbed in the sound and is interrupt free, different from all other normal modes of taking in information. One gets lost in the podcast in question. This is my own experience to the tee. Once again a great observation from Jon that he puts into words.
I must spend some time checking the education literature to see if podcast listening has been trialled against other forms of learning.
OpenID Gaining Traction
The OpenID standard (Wikipedia entry) has been gaining ground from a number of influential organisations. Last week Microsoft finally announced it would support OpenID in its own CardSpace and ID server products. By coincidence I just happened to listen to a podcast on OpenID from the Hanselminutes series. This suggested everyone creates a free OpenID URI at MyOpenID. An informative screencast from Simon Willison explains how to acquire an OpenID URI this way and shows how to use it on some web sites already supporting this new ID standard such as Technorati.
Perhaps another indicator of OpenID’s growing adoption is the announcement recently of FreeYourID. This is a domain registration service which includes an OpenID. I signed up for michael.rees.name with an associated web site and email address of michael@rees.name. Today we see an announcement from Techcrunch that digg.com is to offer OpenID. Folks, now is the time to acquire your own OpenID.
