Podcasts are often too long and predictable to hold my attention. That’s why I started making impromptu nanocasts this morning.

By definition, a nanocast is:

* 5 minutes or less in duration.
* Impromptu, not scrpted.

Jay Cross @ Internet Time Blog

(Image: Anatomy of the Human Ear, Wikipedia)

Jay Cross shares some good ideas about nanocasting: bite-sized podcasts. I agree; I’m not a big fan of the lengthy podcast - and my guess is that unless you’re an auditory person who can hold your attention to lengthy and focused listening, I’d say not many others do! YouTube is testament to the fact that we are a predominantly visual culture (also see for example Ways of Seeing by John Berger from 1970s), feasting and consuming with our eyes.

I’d add Jonathan Finkelstein to the list of nanocasters; he usually podcasts (and vodcasts) about 1-2 minute pointers relating to online interaction in synchronous learning environments to great effect. He usually uses a “hook” - mostly a metaphor. He also draws together real-time and asynchronous tasks, events or activities, so that each “nanocast” is not taken in isolation.

My short post on literacy can also be further reflected on here; being able to transform various chunks of information into not only knowledge, but a contextualised, social and participatory experience, is for me the real art of designing for learning in the 21st century. As an ed designer, I’m always looking for ways to do this in my collaborations with teachers, that draw on informal learning settings and workplaces (especially relevant in VET) as well as defining/translating learners’ needs.

There are a couple of key elements I’d add to Jay’s notion of a nanocast:

1. including appropriate imagery with the audio clip can act as an initial “hook”, giving the listener a visual reference point while listening (satisfying our visual wants).
   1. I’ll qualify this from a user’s perspective: When I’m listening to audio, I do tend to surf at the same time - essentially getting other things done as I’m listening. I usually can’t sit still and just listen!
2. adding some key dot points or an intro sentence (as Cross did) outlining the content of the podcast can also be a hook.
   1. however, if you title your pod/nanocast appropriately, that may be all the hook you need!
3. I reckon being able to interact with a podcast in some way can also add value, and you can do this by:
   1. responding to a podcast using the comments feature
   2. responding to a podcast with your own podcast and cross-linking
   3. using a service like Chinswing to link all relevant podcasts together (in a channel) in a linear , asynchronous “conversation” - building you a bigger picture of the discussion as it progresses.

I’m conscious of the type of information we provide and consume via our social software tools and services and often wonder if we really do enough as educators to model our expectations of the benefits these tools have to learning. Recording a 1-hour lecture and podcasting it, is not necessarily better, only different. Where’s the “hook”? The context? And indeed, the learning?

There are practical examples that exist, like Teachers Teaching Teachers and CommunitiesConnect, where audio has a definite purpose and meets specific needs.

I reckon we need to first become better at identifying needs then work at applying the appropriate technology to meet those needs. So too, as educators, we should be teaching learners to better identify needs - in our reality however, it’s often a case of consume (or even produce!) first then think about it some other time - where IS that some other time, when we are always so “busy”?

technorati tags:podcast, nanocast, jay.cross, literacy, chinswing, participatory, social.software, educational.design, time, needs, learning

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