HigherEdBlogCon 2006

If you hadn’t kept track the HigherEdBlogCon started today. I wasn’t planning on writing up any notes since it’s an online conference where anyone can watch/participate, but since it matches my interests I should at least comment on the ideas. I need to post more often anyways.

There were two presentations today with the topic of podcasting and screencasting. With such a hot topic I was rather disappointed to see only two presentations. However on further study that appears to be the format of the “conference”, two presentations a day. If you want more commentary on podcasting in education I suppose you can just check out edupodder. I’ve also recently written about it here.

Giving the students what they want: Short, to-the-point e-lectures

This presentation came off a bit as a “screencasting is better than podcasting” though it is mostly how to use screencasting in a course. I personally think each has it’s strengths and weaknesses depending on the application. There are times when doing video makes sense and then there are times when audio would likely be preferable. He does give some good recommendation like doing topic-centric segments which helps students find the information they want. The presentation also mentioned syndication which is an important aspect and is sometimes overlooked by those in education. Posting material online is not “casting” in itself. Having multiple modes of access though is helpful though. The presentation was a worthwhile watch.

Legal issues in podcasting the traditional classroom

Legal issues were also touched on in the first presentation (remove copyrighted works from your lecture slides), but this presentation went much more in depth and was broken up into two parts. The first part was an introduction to podcasting and to copyright law. It then went into what types of copyrighted content you may find yourself attempting to use in podcasts and what you can and can’t use. There was a nice mention of creative commons. The second part of this presentation was about what educational uses are allowed. I won’t bother recapping all the points of either of these presentations. If you are podcasting then you should watch these presentations. Don’t presume that you have the right to use something for your course.