Podcasting: No reason to be blue.

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Podcasting: No reason to be blue.

Still getting caught up on my blogs, and just read through a post of Will’s about the podcasting blues. It falls in along the same lines of Alan’s post about Yawncasting. Both Alan and Will are a bit disillusioned about Podcasting and their potential for education. I think both of them have missed a few key points about podcasting though and why it’s significant.

First off, I don’t want to simply try to make the case for podcasting, that it’s wonderful and will solve all the world’s problems. It won’t. But what it does do is open up all sorts of new avenues.
Podcasting is a technology that’s in its infancy, only about three months old now if I’m correct. Think about blogging when it was three months old. Trust me, it wasn’t the word of the year at that time. However, people saw the potential for it which is why it’s hung around so long. One of the key pieces that made blogging so popular is it’s accessibility. ANYONE can do it. Literally, anyone can create and update a blog. That doesn’t necessarily mean just anyone WILL, but they can. Many blogs fail. However, the reason they fail is not because it’s too steep of a learning curve, it’s because they just don’t follow through and maintain it. I’m not a psychologist, but I personally file it in the same category with “Why Steve doesn’t weed the garden on a regular basis.” It isn’t because I don’t like having a weed free garden, it’s simply not a job that I take great pleasure in. It’s not something I look forward to. My father-in-law loves spending time in the garden, fondling plants and yanking out weeds. He can’t wait to do it every weekend. Different strokes for different folks. Some dig blogging, some don’t.

Podcasting is pretty similar to this. Some people love to write. Some people love to talk. Some people love to be seen. It’s why radio never replaced books, TV never replaced radio, and the internet hasn’t replaced anything besides the quality time we used to spend with loved ones. Blogging made the web available to writers everywhere, even those that weren’t geeky. Podcasting has the potential to open up ‘radio’ to ‘DJ’s’ everywhere, even those that don’t have a billion dollar radio station behind them. A blog about how technology is being used to enhance rodeo clowns’ performances could be very successful. If it’s rewarding to the writer, and there are people out there that are interested in the subject, then that’s all it takes for it to be worthwhile (it could very easily be worthwhile even with no audience, but that’s a different discussion). Same thing with a podcast.

Will says,

And most of what I’ve listened to is either equally self-indulgent or doesn’t get over the would-be-just-as-good-if-not-better-in-a-blog bar. Talking through a list of links that’s posted somewhere else just seems kind of pointless.

I couldn’t disagree more. It’s like saying, why bother with a radio show that highlights the days NFL games when you could just as easily go to ESPN.com and check it out for yourself. Why listen to NPR when you could just read it in print? Why listen to Al Franken or Rush Limbaugh when you could just read a transcript of the show? Personally, I like hearing people’s voices. It adds a whole other dimmension to the content. Like I’ve said before, hearing Alan November speak is completely different than simply reading the notes from a workshop of his. There’s a connection there that is very different from the connection you make with something you read.

Now let’s take a look at it from the read/listener perspective. Why do you read someone’s blog? Because they have something to say that you’re interested in reading. Someblogs are journals, some are news related, some are informative, and others simply make you think. One way or another, you connect with the author or at least the content they’re providing to you. Since blogs are basically free to create and maintain, people can create content for absolutely anything that they’re interested in. If you are really into the latest innovations in balloon animals, I’m sure you can find other people who are also interested in it. It has the ability reach people with any interest, regardless of how few other people might be interested in it too. It’s one of the greatest things about the medium.

Podcasting is the exact same way. There have the potential to be as many podcasts out there as there are blogs. Will they be any good? Well, that all depends on how you define ‘good’, doesn’t it? There are a ton of really bad blogs. They happen to have thousands of people who read them on a daily basis too. Rush Limbaugh has millions of listeners. I agree with Mr. Franken, and think Rush is a big fat idiot. However, millions listen to him daily. If he was only in print, would he have such a large audience? I doubt it. People like to hear Rush’s perspective on what’s going on in the world. Even though all he’s doing is reading the news, the same news you get from the Times, people like to hear him read it and hear what his spin is on it. Go figure, eh? I can relate though. I enjoy listening to the woman formally known as Tech Chick, even when she’s just reading through a list of what technology she reccomends people buy their loved ones for the holidays. Is it earth shattering? No. Is there much in the way of new information? No. However, I connect with her because she’s a blogger, podcaster, educator and she lives in my area. And because of this, I still like to hear her thoughts. I’d rather listen to her than Rush. She has a niche that I happen to fall in to.

Ok, let’s summarize what we have so far. We have a new technology in it’s infancy. It’s becoming very accessible to people who aren’t geeks. It allows people to hear each others voices and make a different sort of connection than simply reading print. It can accomodate any topic, no matter how small the niche is. Not bad so far. However, it’s not without it’s problems.

Alan stated,

It’s just that I lack time to sift through a linear media to find the beef. And that is my whinge- that the form of the information can be unbundled, broken into smaller bits, re-mixed, or internally linked. How would I direct my students to a pertinent 2 minute section of a 19 minute audio cast? I liked a few months back how John Udell had touched on that with a demo of a way to provide URL links to a segment of a .mp3– see Prime Time Multimedia.

You cannot really interact with a podcast, or comment on it, or participate in any way beyond listening. It is just there, a glut to listen to, ignore, or just store.

He’s dead on. However, the technology has been around for 3 months! That’s it! He has a wonderful point, and it’s something that needs to be addressed. When you listen to the radio, you can’t “find the beef”. You listen to what’s on, like it or not. Same thing with TV. Sure Tivo helps, but even then you can’t “link to a 2 minute section” of a 30 minute TV show. Nor would we expect you to be able to. However, like I said, podcasting is in it’s infancy. I bet within a half year, someone comes up with a way to add chapters to a podcast. Something along the lines of turning a podcast into an album instead of a single mp3 file, where each track is a chapter. Then you can go straight to the 2 minutes you want. It’s a damn fine idea, and there are some really smart people out there.

Will points out,

… I think podcasting should be an attempt to emulate the good stuff we hear on radio not just idle rambling about why one beer is better than another. There should be some reporting, some background work, some meaning.

The good stuff like Howard Stern right? Millions of people listen to him. Background work like what goes on in Bill O’Reilley’s radio show? Meaningful as in the chit chat you hear between Britney’s latest song and Eminem’s politically motivated hit? To some people, a conversation about why one beer is better than another would be the ideal podcast. To others, it would be idle rambling. If you don’t like what you’re listening to, then you’re listening to then move on across the dial.

At any given time, let’s say there’s 50 radio stations active in your area. At the same time, there are a few hundred podcasts available. Find one you like. If you don’t find anything you like, then MAKE one you like! I bet someone else out there will like it too. Why am I so sure? I’ve done 7 podcasts. The number of people listening to me has increased every week. Why on earth do they want to listen to me? I have no clue. But for some reason they have a connection to me. Maybe it’s just to mock me as I ramble on and on. Maybe it’s just to reaffirm that there’s someone lower on the food chain than them. I have no idea. But people are listening.

From Will:

While my two attempts were fun, I guess, I can’t help but wonder what anyone really got out of my droning on about my high-fallutin thoughts on the education world. No links to follow. No way to engage in the ideas. Nothing there that wouldn’t work just as well in a blog post.

Will is an educator that I respect greatly. He has wonderful ideas. I have an hour commute to work each way. I would rather listen to him drone on about his high-fallutin thoughts on education than listen to NPR do a special about music in Zanzibar. Or two bloated morons bickering over whether the Bears are worse now than in 1999. Or Howard Stern discover the joys of robotic spanking. Will has input into a niche that will never have it’s own show on terrestrial radio. There just aren’t enough people in any given market to make it cost effective. However, his podcast was free, and I enjoyed listening to it. I certainly enjoyed it more than anything else that was on the radio at that time. Even without links, or the ability to give instant feedback. I had to actually wait till I got home before I could email him to let him know how much I enjoyed it. Life’s tough

I haven’t even began to get into anything remotely related to education in particular, but I’ll continue onwards in another post. A closing though though. Will closed his post by saying, “If it’s just as good in text, why bother.” If it’s just as good in Podcast, why bother with text? Different strokes for different folks. Trust me, like print and radio, podcasts and blogs will both have their own audiences who will argue to the death over why one is better than the other.

Just wait till video casting goes mainstream. Oy vey.

1 Comment(s)

Will R.
1/5/2005

Great post, Steve, and a lot of points well taken. You are absolutely right that Podcasts can serve many niche audiences and many different styles of learners, and I’m feeling like I came down a bit too hard in my post. The technology is new, and as long as educators like you keep writing and talking about it, we really will figure out what it can and can’t do. I think I tend to want to define things too narrowly (read my frequent diatribes on “blogging the verb”), and this is one instance where it’s not such an easy fit. I try to picture students podcasting as it’s defined TODAY (as an rss enclosure, etc), and I find it hard to see many of them sustaining it the way Matthew Bischoff has. But I do definitely see them using the technology in a number of ways; audio essays, oral histories, etc. I know we could do that before, but the difference now is we can PUBLISH them, and that’s what is so cool.

I’m not going to stop Podcasting, per se, but I’m going about it differently, writing, mixing, reporting…not just talking. I think that’s where the value is for me. But I totally understand that ’s not the only way people can find value in it. Thanks for reminding me of that.

Best,

Will

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