Convenient, portable, user-friendly and cost-effective.These qualities of podcasting have created true believers in an educational and technological tool poised to take e-learning to new heights.
But just what is it, how important is it to education, how does it operate and what is required for one to use it?
The Teacher spoke to international expert Duncan Kemp during his recent visit to South Africa.
What is podcasting?
Podcasting is one of those things that have really taken off over the past two or three years. Education is looking at (podcasting) as a way of reaching out to learners and of involving them in the digital world. It is a very simple way for them to package education in bite sizes that can be viewed on a computer or a cellphone or even an ipod.
Why do you think it is important to education?
I think we need it because it is part of the world we are living in. Sometimes it is not easy for people to study. They are studying because they want to better themselves, but they are working and don’t have time to go to lectures or to attend school. So what podcasting can do, is to provide them with access to learning inbetween jobs or during the time they can set aside to study.
How will this work in the context of South Africa where the majority of schools are located within poor communities?
Podcasting could really help in rural schools because when you teach out there you can’t always be a master of everything. But you have teachers elsewhere who specialise or are really good in history, maths or literacy and all those sorts of subjects. So these teachers can share their great examples of lessons, so that a teacher who is out in a rural school can work through the medium of podcasting with teachers in another school that has better funding or more teachers.
We are looking at podcasting in South Africa as a tool for teachers to spread the good news and good ideas about teaching. A teacher out there can log on and see what other people are doing in another school and connect with them. It can get very lonely if you are just doing it on your own.
How do you motivate a teacher whose school lacks resources and has resigned him or herself to the fact that there is no way they can access it?
Technology is for everybody. It is not just for the privileged few. And we are seeing more and more technology getting into people’s hands. In South Africa everybody seems to have a cellphone. It is not just for the small elite, whereas in other countries that is not the case.
I think this is illustrative of the fact that technology does work its way down; everybody gets access to it somehow. It becomes the duty of those who are controlling and building the education system to ensure it is not an elitist facility. This is where companies such as Apple come in to help them support and develop technologies that can be used throughout.
But I’d say to all teachers out there that technology is not elitist. Technology is something that children respond to well, they master it so quickly and you don’t have to be privileged to understand how technology works.
Inside every child is creativity yearning to come out and digital technology really helps to do that. That can be the spark that changes their view of education.
Duncan Kemp is Apple’s education business development manager for Central Europe, Middle East and Africa. He recently made a presentation in South Africa on the significance of podcasting to education