Thursday, December 19, 2013

You Can Now Listen to iTunes Podcasts on Your Chromebook

Till now, the only way to download an iTunes podcast was through iTunes itself, which you cannot get on a Chromebook. Whether you are already using podcasts from iTunes in your classroom or would like to start and your students are using Chromebooks, here is a great workaround that we learned about from Bryan Weinert on Leyden Techies.  

Normally what you would see when you go to a listing for podcasts that are in iTunes would be this:



Just have your students install the iTunes Audio Prevgiew/Podcast Downloader extension from the Chrome web store


Now, when you go to your chosen podcast page, the extension will add a Download link next to each audio file that the students can click on and listen to or download to their chromebook or Google Drive.  This will also work on your laptop when using the Chrome Browser.


Once on the new tab, you can get the url for that specific podcast to share with your students...  Check out the iTunes podcast listing page, for thousands of free podcasts organized into dozens of searchable categories.  Once you find a podcast you'd like your students to listen to, you can share the URL with them by posting it on your website, in your LMS (Moodle, Edmodo, Schoology), or just email it to them. Unfortunately this extension only works for audio podcasts and not video podcasts.


Update - 10-10-14

Aside from iTunes, there are many Chrome apps for listening to Podcasts.  There are too many to mention them all, but just based on ratings in the Chrome web store, here are 3 you may want to consider

Cloud Caster is a podcast player for Chrome that keeps track of all your podcasts in the cloud.Cloud Caster can be used on your Chromebook, PC and Mac as well as on almost all mobile devices running iOS, Android, Windows Phone or Blackberry. This means you will always have access to your podcasts and have a playlist in sync. Cloud Caster remembers where you left off on one device and lets you resume from that position if you continue to listen on another device. You can start listening to a podcast at home on your desktop computer, keep listening on the bus with your mobile device and finish the podcast on your computer at work/school when you get there.



Airing Pods as a Chrome web App is a shortcut to launch airingpods.com.


Airing Pods give you various ways of finding Podcasts (Shows). Comes with an easy to use Podcast Player, which plays your podcasts all in the browser. No plugin/software to install, and it make this a well suited podcast manager for your Chromebook as well.


ShortOrange is a cloud-based cross-platform podcast player with which you can listen to your favorite podcasts via the ShortOrange Chrome app, online via our web application, or with our iOS app (android coming soon!). In addition, ShortOrange syncs your podcast data between all platforms via the cloud to enable a seamless transition between devices. ShortOrange is the ultimate app to listen, subscribe, and manage all your favorite podcasts in the cloud. 



Wednesday, December 11, 2013

What Did you Create Today

There is a message from Jamie Casup's Keynote address at this years NYSCATE Conference that continues to resonate with us.  It is is a variation of a message many of us have been haranguing our own children with for years (usually when they have parked themselves in front of the TV or a video game for too long).  That message is that we need to move from being consumers of information and consumers of entertainment, to be creators of content and leaders in this world of technology. Advances in Technology for the last 30 years have put devices in the hands of more people than ever.  In fact, a"Cisco report says number of smartphones, tablets, laptops and internet-capable phones will exceed number of humans in 2013" enabling more people to consume more media than ever before.  If we are going to succeed in preparing our students to be "College and Career Ready," we need to teach them (and model for them) how to use this technology to create content and be true leaders with technology.

This explosion in technological advances that has created an ease of media consumption has also created devices and software tools that enable everyday people to be published authors, software developers, web-masters, video directors and more, putting their ideas and creations out there for world to see (and to buy).  As educators, we need to not only embrace the use of these tools in the classroom, but use them in a way that puts the students as creators of unique and meaningful content.  As tech coaches, we have the privilege of working with many talented teachers who want to use more technology or use it more effectively in the classroom.  Many of them are just beginning with using these tools such as Edmodo, Google Apps for Education, and Screencast-O-Matic. The first step in using these tools is for teachers to become more familiar with using them, learning how to efficiently use them in the classroom, and to better engage students in each lesson.  The next step is allow students to create their own content and be leaders of their own Learning.  Free tools like Google SitesVoki, WeVideo, Animoto, and Pixton make it easy for teachers to turn a simple class project into opportunities for students to truly be creators and collaborators.

When we speak of College and Career Ready, we need to be mindful of what kind of careers we are preparing students for.  The Department Of Labor has determined that 65% of the jobs that our grade school children will have when they graduate haven't been created yet, so what is the career/job that we are preparing them for?  In order for students to be successful, they need to have solid set of academic skills, as well as problem solving and teamwork skills, but they also need to know how to be producers using digital tools. Over this same time period of major growth in technology, there has been a 49% increase in the number of small businesses.  Many of our students will be the architects of not only their own job, but their own business!  This will only happen if we move our trend from traditional methods of teaching, through the paradigm of teachers using technology to create lessons, to the future where students are actively engaged in using technology to create and not merely consume.

Monday, December 2, 2013

Education 3.0

Web 3.0

The world wide web is influencing education just as it is the rest of our culture (albeit much slower...), and a lot can be inferred (or hoped for) about the future of education by looking at the trajectory that the Web is on.  

The term and concept of Web 3.0 is a natural progression from the Web 2.0 term coined in 1999 by Darcy DiNucci and then made wildly popular by Dale Dougherty and Tim O'Reilly of O'Rielly Media with the Web 2.0 Conference that was first held in 2004.  Web 2.0 took us from static content much like a library to a place where information was easily created by anyone and contributed to through Wikipedia, blogs and feedback in a myriad of forms.  Social media like MySpace and Facebook evolved to allow not just sharing of content and ideas, but connecting people with like interests.  Nova Spivack, founder of Radar Networks among other start ups defines Web 3.0 as a period of time (see image below) so as to eliminate the possibility of the term being co-opted and capitalized on.  His take on the direction of the web is the ability of a more personalized experience building on your browsing history, likes, dislikes as well as a Semantic Web where we are not merely able to search keywords in content on the web, but able to find content based on the meaning in that content. 

Knowmads and Invisible Learning

John Moravec, PhD is a scholar on the future of work and education and is the editor of the Knowmad Society project and co-director of the Invisible Learning Project.  He looks at the convergence of changes in the world of work, the advances of the World Wide Web and Education.  He created the following meme to help elucidate the changes in the Web and how they have changed or will change education.  This is a futurist view of how he sees that education must evolve to meet the changing world we live in and to do so by capitalizing on the technology that exists and is being created.


Education 3.0?

It is easy to see the potential for Web 3.0 applications in education.  Personalized searches of content that are based on past web activity applied to learning activities and tutorials would be a huge leap forward for what technology can do to help teachers differentiate learning. These advances are years down the road and Education is often one of the last arenas to adopt new technology so we can't rely on the technology to change schools.  Education 3.0 is achievable with today's technology. We simply must move away from the teacher centered, mass produced education system that defined the 20th Century if schools are to be relevant in today's economy. John Moravec presents a vision of schools and learning that is worth striving for regardless of the advances made in Web 3.0 technology.