Let’s Start Talking More in ‘09: Happy New Year everyone! When thinking about what I could include in this week’s blog, I wanted to create a theme for the new year. I decided on simple, dedicated and powerful. I thought long and hard about what you’ve all told me you find most valuable over the last 2.5 years and two overriding themes consistently presented themselves in workshop evaluation comments, face to face conversations, emails and phone calls. Networking and Hands-On Experiences were, by far, what you’ve all told me you value more than just about anything else.
This is very interesting to me because these two valuables are also what I fear are in most danger of disappearing from our experiences as professional educators completely. It’s no secret that funds are tight and a reoccuring issue over the past couple of years has been lack of professional development funds for educators to attend workshops and conferences (Networking) and lack of lab workshops (Hands-On Experiences). So, how is it that we’ve arrived at a place where the two things educators indicate are of the highest value to them are also two of the first items to be cut? I’m not sure of the answer to that question and I’m not sure our time is well spent determining one.
Rather, we should focus our efforts on ways to be innovative and more efficient. Simple, Dedicated and Powerful. MOBCASTING is something I mentioned quickly once before I think, but it’s something we should revisit in more detail. By the way, I usually link new terminology to it’s entry in Wikipedia as you probably know, but Wikipedia currently has no entry at all for Mobcast!
…Might be a fun exercise as your students come back from break to come up with a definition of Mobcast and enter it in Wikipedia AS A CLASS! How cool! How engaging!
Mobcasting, according to the Whatis.com Podcasting Glossary, is: “an audio program that can be received on cell phones or mobile devices. Also called a “mobilecast” or, in the case of video content, “movlog.“
What I’m suggesting is that educators start using Mobcasting as a quick, simple and powerful way to Network with other educators and also to provide themselves with some Hands-On training in the podcasting areas. Think of Mobcasting as podcasting with the added ability for DISCUSSION!
So, the next few week’s will be dedicated to Mobcasting including detailed step-by-step how-to’s. For now, know that it’s free (although requires cell phones or recording devices of some sort), it’s easy and innovative. It’s honestly as easy as dialing your cell phone and talking into it once someone sets it up.
Think of it as a group of educators using their cell phones to post voice messages, thoughts, ideas, questions to a common pool of audio files available to not only their network, but to the general public if they so choose! This is powerful, it’s mobile, it’s easy and efficient! Let’s Do It!
A Few Mobcasting examples worth taking a look at:
Hurricane Katrina: “A Public Gallery of Thoughts, Images and Sounds in Response to Hurricane Katrina” This was created as an open forum for people to respond via blog posting and/or Mobcast/podcast. Very cool idea!
KnowProse.com: A nice article on many of the aspects of what I have in mind for mobcasting educators. www.knowprose.com/node/1438
AndyCarvin Mobcasting! http://www.andycarvin.com/archives/mobcasting/
TechTV: http://www.g4techtv.com/screensavers/episodes/3852/JibJab_Nerdy_Cookbooks_Mobcasting.html
AND a bonus for this week: With a new computer at home (which is where I am this week), I had a need today to get files off of my iPod before formatting it to the new Mac at home. A great little free application that did the job nicely is called iPoddisk. It’s a helpful tool for anyone making a switch from a PC formatted iPod to Mac. Check it out here: http://mac.sofotex.com/download-129449.html
By: Marilou Vander Griend on January 2, 2009 
