NPR podcasting resources

NPR offers a great curriculum guide for educators wanting to teach students podcasting skills. The guide includes specific ordered assignments identifying and developing important communication skills.

I sometimes feel guilty endorsing authoring options I have not implemented or taught. I spent my career speaking to hundreds of people multiple times each week, but I could never really get into creating audio content for sequential distribution. I started to consider why this is the case. This focus on writing also applies to the books I read vs. the books I input as audio. I listen for fun. I read when I want to remember and use.

I have a long-term investment in writing. I have had an active blog or two since 2002. I think my bias is that writing offers greater control. The written word offers the writer and reader to better manage the input and uptake processes. You can stop and think when you want and you can modify your thinking before you share or make permanent. I think I learn from the process of writing and not from the act of speaking. Preparation is ongoing when you write and has been completed when you speak especially when what you say is the end of the process. This is not the case in a conversation.

Listening can be made more active. In a pure lecture situation, the listeners should be participating by taking notes. I can’t say I plan to take notes when I listen to a podcast. I might send myself a note when I hear a nugget I want to remember. The frequency of note taking from podcasts is not that high.

Having identified this distinction, I will also claim that there are ways to make listening a more engaged process. I would point to the services I describe as layering as an example. Some such services allow the listener/viewer to pause (control) the input and annotate. This is not the type of thing you should do while driving your car or mowing your lawn but the active processing of a streamed input can be improved.

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