I feel a little ashamed admitting this, but it never occurred to me before reading this week that the term “podcast” came from downloading the audio files to an iPod. Maybe it’s because I never owned an iPod though, and because I don’t regularly listen to podcasts on any mobile device (or frequently, for that matter). More than anything, these readings made me think about different learning styles and choice of medium. I cannot learn effectively by listening to just an audio recording. Being in a room, seeing a presenter face-to-face, I can easily pay attention. But removed from that context, my attention wanders after roughly 5 minutes of pure audio. As an example, before Thanksgiving break, I downloaded an hour-long interview with Ann Hamilton on why she considers herself a “maker” rather than artist. I tried listening to it on my laptop over the weekend, but couldn’t concentrate. Wanting to hear the interview, I burned a CD and listened in the car while driving back to Lafayette, and easily absorbed the full podcast. Examples such as this cause me to question the line in Levy where he quotes Steve Jobs talking about iPods being something to listen to while driving instead of watching videos. Part of me wonders if this only happens because driving relies so heavily on visual attention. At the same time, when I was a kid and my mom would travel, she would record herself reading book chapters (she read to me nightly), and I could pay attention to those recordings by following along visually in the book. Perhaps this is the case for me because I struggle to think of a context where I’ve been conditioned to listen without some other sensory experience involved (visual, vocal, tactile, kinetic, etc.).

Secondarily, reading Gitelman and Levy, it seems that one of the overarching themes of this semester is how media emerge within particular social contexts, are predicted to be revolutionary across widespread contexts, and ultimately find a much smaller niche than predicted (word processing instruction, MOOs and MUDs, Second Life, etc.). That is, borrowing Gitelman’s phrase, any new media are “always already new.” So, I wonder if there’s any historical evidence regarding the attentiveness, or the ability of individuals to learn via telegraph, audio recording, etc.?

Levy’s article, which I found the least dry of the two, had me critically analyze my view of podcasting in relation to writing – since we do, at least I, often make the distinction between audio and paper.

I like to write, maybe that’s obvious, and I often listen to podcasts – less obvious unless you know me – and implement them into my instruction (in an ESL setting). But what I hadn’t considered before is this intersection between blogs and broadcasting and how podcasts negotiate that area.  Typically, in a pedagogical sense, I separate writing activities from listening activities (though all the skills are integrated): write a response to this reading, listen to this podcast and shadow the stress, intonation, & rhythm of the speaker. Sadly, I hadn’t contemplated, beyond the surface anyways, the benefits of engaging with a podcast with all four skills: reading, writing, listening, & speaking. And it has me wondering why more ESL instructors have also neglected this area – it seems to be a wealth of “natural” language use for students to engage with.  So while it seems podcasts are dying off these days (or making a come back), I’d definitely like to explore the idea of playing with language through creating podcasts – which I’ve done in a 106 setting, but acknowledge would look quite different in 106i or 620.