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.

We can play at learning, without retaining much save the temporary pleasure of the play, and we can act the teacher, strutting expectable stuff in front of blackboards. Real learning and real teaching require more. Successful learning gives us that rush of confidence which comes from competence. We cannot fake it. Often it comes from a struggle, from hard reflecting, from trial and error, from considering the previously unconsidered. Sometimes it jumps out serendipitously, like the meant word in a crossword puzzle. Sometimes it is forced out by apprehension, by the fear that if we do not master this sequence of ideas, we will suffer a reduced respect from ourselves, our teachers, or our peers. Whether our learning comes from orderly revelation or serendipity or hard attention fueled with apprehension, we know that the process we went through to reach understanding is complex, subtle, often mysterious, and sometimes not much fun at all.

I think this paragraph really jumped out for me because it is very successful at describing the complexity of the relationship between learning and teaching. One approach, one philosophy, one outcome, or one measurement of this relationship seems too reductionistic and short-sighted. Here’s looking forward to having the time and motivation to explore learning and teaching in depth.

• An emphasis on the social “human” sharing of information;
• Information convergence, which means that data can be passed from one application or tool to another;
• A high degree of customizability, the cut-and-paste culture at its best;
• Bottom-up development, not top-down.

Again, look through some of the above write-ups, because they do it better than I do. However, I do believe that Peter Merholz said it best: “The point isn’t the features, it’s the underlying philosophy of relinquishing control” (hmmm… sounds like many of the edtech conversations and presentations I’ve heard, such as the ol’ “Guide on the Side vs. Sage on the Stage” discussion).

RSS has been the recent buzz in the educational blogosphere, and it is a very useful and effective tool for managing the flow of information (once RSS itself as a concept is understood — for an academic paper on the evolution of the digital divide concept, see “Reconceptualizing the Digital Divide”). However, RSS is just on tool in the Web 2.0 toolbox — and there are many. The idea of the “perpetual beta” is a daunting one, as new features pop up often unannounced, allowing for new uses. This kind of technology development requires time to play and experiment, which as we all know, teachers are quite short on. As a result, frustration levels are likely to rise and a reactionary response will possibly occur, just as it always has when trying to change large complex systems and behaviors such as the teaching profession. Even my wife, who I would classify as relatively technologically savvy, has been fed up with my attempts to introduce to her the affordances of web 2.0 (notably RSS). It will just take time….

Later, I hope to document a use case or so on using the web 2.0 philosophy and technologies to encourage the learning process.