Podzinger is a search engine for podcasts. Rather than allowing you to just search for a podcast based on the title, description, tags, or categories (as podcasting portal sites such as Odeo, The Education Podcast Network, PodcastAlley, and iPodder do), Podzinger lets you search the transcript of the podcast itself. Built upon speech-to-text technology developed by BBN, a searchable transcript is automatically generated whenever one of the indexed podcast feeds is updated. The context surrounding your search term(s) is displayed in the search results, so you have the option of listening (and subscribing) to the podcast in its entirety, or clicking on one of the words to jump directly to it.

While I’m on the subject of audio technology tools, I’ve installed Talkr functionality to to this blog. Talkr reads the RSS feed of this blog and then using text-to-speech technology creates an mp3 file of individual posts being read using fairly high-quality synthetic speech. You can either subscribe to the Talkr feed or listen or download individual posts by visiting the original post entry (the link to listen to the article is at the bottom).

Just as I brought up the notion that certain individuals may favor images and visualizations to words, there is also research to support the idea that some (or many, depending on who you talk to) learners’ reading comprehension skills are facilitated by computer-based text-to-speech functionality (e.g., Text-to-speech software for helping struggling readers, Applying Principles of Universal Design to Test Delivery, and Jumping off the page. Since I mentioned Marshall McLuhan earlier, it should be noted that this research, and more or less Talkr podcasts (my own included), do not really delve into or exhibit the power of the spoken word as a medium in and of itself. Instead, the transformation of printed text into spoken text is considered and represented. I hope to tackle these ideas later.

Just as a point of reference, someone who does a great job of taking advantage of podcasting as a medium in its own right, is Bob Sprankle and his students of Wells, Maine (US). In a professional development institute I co-lead last summer, entitled Shaking Up The Classroom, I introduced podcasting to the group of teachers through a clip from the Summer Literature Circle 02 podcast (kids and parents discussing books together? During the summer?).

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N.B., I’m realizing that this post on Podzinger and Talkr, as well as my earlier post on Retrievr is helping to put a focus on my talk for November Learning’s Building Learning Communities 2006 conference this summer. I’m listed on the Main Conference Sessions page along with all very impressive people, including one of my professors from graduate school. Not that there’s any pressure or anything. But some of posts in the near future may take this tact. At BLC ‘06, I’ll be talking about using social software to help build inclusive learning communities.

Retrievr is an interface which allows you to find Flickr photos by drawing a rough sketch (see the screenshot). It may not be as accurate as, say, a search on Google with words, but it’s also not bad. At one point, as I was attempting to elicit a red apple, a pumpkin was included in the results. I then tried to get the pumpkin back by sketching an orange blob with a short stem: I was unable to get a pumpkin included in the results, but I did get a bowl of spaghetti. It’s also important to keep in mind that it does not recognize sketches as iconic representations. For example, in the screenshot, Retrievr does not recognize my sketch of a rough green triangle with a short brown horizontal line as a “tree.” It recognizes my sketch in its entirety as a rough green triangle with a short brown horizontal line and a blue/green/white background (it took me a bit of experimentation to figure out the background piece of the equation: the background does matter when performing a Retrievr search). In addition, Retrievr currently only draws upon Flickr’s most interesting photos; Retrievr’s developers do invite submissions and a submission interface is in the works.

But enough about Retrievr’s limitations. I think that this method of search holds some promise for learners, as I said above, who may have trouble expressing themselves or processing information in words. It may also be a boon for those who simply prefer images and visualizations to words, especially if you combine Retrievr, Flickr, and, without trying to toot my own horn too much, my Greasemonkey script Trope for Flickr. Learners can start off a search by drawing a sketch in Retrievr and find the most appropriate Flickr photo(s). Because Flickr provides the ability and encourages photographers to assign tags to photos, a (albeit unvetted) descriptive vocabulary is provided for each photograph. With Trope for Flickr installed, icons are placed next to each tag allowing the learner to branch off to find information in other forms of media with the same tag, such as web pages (via del.icio.us), blog entries (via Technorati), podcasts (via Odeo), and academic references (via CiteULike).

Imagine the potential for access and power afforded by Retrievr to those learners who have been kept back from interacting with technology because the primary interaction mode of the World Wide Web is the written word.

Then the animal pack/comes scurrying back,/saying, Hey! Come join the lot of us!
And she just doesn’t know–/should she stay? Should she go?
But YES the hippopotamus!
But not the armadillo.

What about that armadillo? As my job entails much thinking about learners “with special needs” or “with disabilities,” I can’t help but keep first the hippo and then the armadillo at the forefront of my mind when reading this book. Technology, beyond the basic accessibility affordances computers and other technology devices provide, has great potential for expanding inclusion. Online communities, producing for an audience, authentic learning tasks, folksonomies, multiple modes of media, all have potential for allowing learners previously unable to reach their full potential to do so. However, a paradox exists: whenever you increase the potential for an individual to succeed, you create barriers for others to do so. We have reached a condition in which Zeno’s paradox takes hold.

Zeno’s paradox of Achilles and the tortoise states that the fast runner Achilles will never be able to catch up with the tortoise in a race — when the tortoise is given a head start — because when Achilles reaches where the tortoise was, the tortoise will have moved already. Such, it seems, is the way with technology. The technology catches up and helps to support certain cohorts of learners; other cohorts are still not supported, or an entirely new class of learners all of a sudden are left out because the new technology puts them at a disadvantage.

I’m not, of course, saying that we should throw out all new technologies. The web2.0 set actually speaks very well to my own style of learning. Instead, I think we should be open the idea that we need to recognize the possibility of new possibilities in learners even if it lies in old technologies.

According to Wikipedia,

Trope comes from the Greek word, tropos, which means a “turn”, as in heliotrope, a flower which turns toward the sun. We can imagine a trope as a way of turning a word away from its normal meaning, or turning it into something else.

In the same vein, the Greasemonkey script Trope provides an opportunity for the user to turn to a new type of source based on a descrete packet of information, the tag. A user can start out looking at a photograph tagged with the word “outdoors,” just as an example, on Flickr , and easily be “turned to” a podcast discussing “outdoors” and environmentalism on Odeo.

These scripts are not perfect. I will be improving them over time, and encourage people to check out the “To Do” List and take a stab as well.

The Flickr Tag Convergence Script

A contribution to Web 2.0. Flickr Tag Convergence is a Greasemonkey script for the Mozilla Firefox browser which allows you to search for any tag on a Flickr photo page on either del.icio.us or Technorati with one mouse click. The script places small icons (one for del.icio.us and one for Technorati) in front of each photo tag (see the screenshot). Clicking on one of these icons will launch the appropriate search.

You can start using this script by: