Editor: James Cain 1
For nearly 20 years, MIT's Foreign Languages and Literatures (FL&L) section has been developing innovative ways to bring new technology into the classroom. Recently, Professor Ellen Crocker took the initiative to locate funding that would allow FL&L and the Language Learning and Resource Center(LLARC) to purchase mobile media players (iPods) for use in the classroom. As a result, faculty members within FL&L and LLARC's computer specialist Joshua Aresty have been exploring ways to use podcasting and also mobile media players within the foreign language curriculum. Some of the challengesin doing this included: locating and making accessible appropriate material, organizing material into contextual rational chunks and managing the copyright. In this article are two examples of how podcasting has been successfully incorporated into the teaching curriculum (See IS&T November/December 2006 for additional projects) and a look at some of the tools used in these projects.
Hardware and more
This article deals with mobile media hardware in the form of the Apple iPod. However, with the exception of some of the Digital Rights Management features that are specific to the iPod, the hardware could just as well have been a mobile media device from another manufacturer (Podcasts are not tied to a particular piece of hardware.) The terms podcasting and podcast refer to a type of web-based audio or video broadcast that is made available to subscriber's and is automatically updated and downloaded (through RSS, a mechanism for syndication) as new material becomes available.
Germany Today
Ellen Crocker is a Senior Lecturer in German for Foreign Languages and Literatures. She used both podcasting and iPods in teaching the IAP 2006 course 21F.405 "Germany Today."
Ms. Crocker had two main goals she hoped to attain by using podcasts and iPods:
- broaden the language learners' experience with a wide range of spoken German from multiple sources, particularly audio and video
- extend the learners' listening experience beyond the classroom and conventional lab and homework settings (stationary settings) in order to increase the frequency and duration of the experience and to redefine the conventional boundaries of the learning experience.
Conventional classrooms provide limited time for foreign language exposure and viewing German News as homework assignments can constrain the times and locations in which students can access this material. Thus, Ms. Crocker was interested in the notion of providing practice materials that students could take with them to practice with anytime and anywhere.
In the IAP January 2006 course "Germany Today" each student was provided with a 30 GB video iPod for the duration of the course. Students had regular assignments for listening but were also encouraged to carry their iPods with them during the day "on the go" and to listen not only to suggested news and features, but also to look for and make suggestions to the class for interesting listening texts, music that they find on the internet.
Of particular interest were the daily radio and television news (podcasts, audio-on-demand) from German-speaking countries (Austria, Germany, Switzerland) as well as feature radio podcasts including interviews and reports on cultural and socio-political topics. Students were provided with the URLs to the podcasts by email. Using iTunes, these URLs, allowed the students to easily syncronize their iPods with the podcasts.
For the duration of the course the general assignment was to listen to the news on a daily basis and be prepared to discuss it in class. Unlike conventional classroom assignments, however, the students were not all listening to the same text(s), but instead were allowed to pick and choose from a larger selection and in the process of discussion discovered common themes and exchanged information and views that were of interest to the others. As students got to know each other better they began to collaborate in order to construct a common understanding from which evolved their own "listening community." Students commented that they listened to spoken German much more frequently, in many varied situations (walking, riding a bike, eating and waiting...) and for longer periods than they ordinarily would without an iPod.
Two technical challenges presented themselves in presenting the course in this form:
- Synchronization of the course material with the iPod (achieved via the iTunes software)
- Selection, organization and presentation of course content. Here the content consisted of a group of Podcasts from which students were expected to sample some material and then specific files that were assigned as required texts.
Students were given a list of Podcast feeds to subscribe to in full for the "sampling" group. For the required listening assignments online media files were located and aggregated to "Repodcast" individual audio and video clips that were then available to download from the Internet.
Difficulties arising from this approach included locating addresses of embedded media on the Internet and then organizing the resulting "repodcast." Many web sites contain streaming video or audio that is not available to download. Determining the enclosure address is often a non-trivial task requiring extra effort to locate.
Another problem was organizing the content. Initially, a single feed for the "assigned" material was presented to the students, which appeared as a long unstructured list of files. However, in language teaching, context is very important, and it is difficult to give context if your content is just a list of materials. After some experimenting it was determined that classification (categorization) of feeds would be a better approach to provide the proper context for this material. One potential solution to this problem that is being explored is a "sharing" service called Google Reader that will be used to Repodcast the feeds.
Hip Hop Japan
Ian Condry is an Assistant Professor in Foreign Languages and Literatures. To extend the experience of global culture, he used video iPods in his course "Hip Hop Japan" (21F.035 Culture and Globalization) to supplement readings and in-class video and audio materials about rap, race and nationalism.
The students used video iPods to listen to Japanese hip-hop music as part of a module on global rap music and political power, with examples from Maori rappers in New Zealand, Basque nationalist rappers in Spain, and Japanese rappers. Professor Condry created the Hip-Hop Japan music archive, which includes about 30 songs with video translations. Many of the songs give a sense of contemporary youth struggles. Most of the songs are rap music from Japan, but the archive also includes folk, enka, pop, and rock.
Students used the video iPods to watch videos, and thereby to gain a deeper understanding of the sounds, performance spaces, and music video images used to convey rap's global dynamic. Ideally, the mobile media players would provide a way to deeper experiential understanding of how globalization looks and sounds from particular cultural viewpoints.
For Professor Condry's class, the challenges were not technical - but were legal. Many of the clips for the course are copyrighted material, and thus cannot be Podcast or re-podcast for distribution. To address these legal issues, a "docking" station was setup in the LLARC with an account just for Professor Condry's students. The students downloaded protected material from this docking station relying on the Digital Rights Management (DRM) system built into iTunes to satisfy the Copyright requirements.
Summary
One of the most exciting aspects of Podcasting is the availability of free, authentic material. An easy and powerful way to use Podcasting in coursework is to find existing materials and "Repodcast" them. LLARC' computer specialist Joshua Aresty, continues to explore new tools and services for accomplishing these tasks. "Google Reader sharing is the best tool that I have found so far," says Mr. Aresty. Other services, such as, Blogdigger Groups as an option for combining multiple feeds into a single feed and "Reblog," continue to be explored. Mr. Aresty believes that a combination of these tools in conjunction with podcasting will be very useful for faculty, especially in Foreign Language instruction. Foreign Languages and Literatures faculty are very excited about the possibilities inherent in this new medium for interaction. They are actively exploring the possibilities, and are excited also to explore and share experiences in the process.
A list of the tools used in these projects is given below. For an in depth look at the use of these tools, please check next months installment.
Special Thanks to Joshua Aresty for his insight into and support for these Projects. I would also like to thank the following for their contributions and willingness to share their knowledge and experience.
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Mobile Media Unit Projects Faculty and Staff:
Foreign Languages and Literatures
Ellen W. Crocker, Senior Lecturer in German
Ian Condry, Assistant Professor
Kurt Fendt, Research Associate
Tong Chen, Lecturer in Chinese
Margarita Groeger, Lecturer in Spanish
Links:
Blip.tv [Free Podcasting Host]
Del.icio.us [Social Bookmarking]
Feedburner [Feed Normalization and Tracking]
Google Reader [Reader for News Sites and Blogs]
Reblog [Tool for Filtering and Republishing Feeds]
WordPress [Free Blogging Provider]
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Language Learning and Resource Center
Ruth Trometer, Director
Joshua Aresty, Computer Specialist
Cliff Myers, Media Production Specialist
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1 For more information on FL&L projects using mobile media devices and podcasting please see IS&T newsletter, November/December 2006.
