Bud the Teacher

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Taking the Plunge

March 23rd, 2005 · 4 Comments

       When I first started this blog, I challenged myself to eventually put a podcast together.  I spent a lot of time figuring out how to do it, technically, but then I drifted on to some other things.  But now I’m back to the podcasting. 
        It took a while.  I needed a little bit of equipment and a big dose of courage.  The more I listened to the really great educational podcasts out there, the more nervous I got.  But a challenge is a challenge.  So, like Jim, I’m taking the podcasting plunge.  We’ll see if I can tread water.
        Here is my first podcast, a brief thoughtstream on identity, anonymity and blogs.  I’ve written about this topic before, but I liked having the opportunity to talk my way through the issue. 
        I sure hope that you do. 

Tags: Podcasting · The Podcast

4 responses so far ↓

  • Eric "Anonymous" Jefcoat // Mar 24th 2005 at 12:11 am

    Bud,

    Great job! I enjoyed listening to your first podcasting venture. You have a very good voice for it–keep it up.

    You make a good point about anonymous teacher blogs. If you have to be anonymous to say it, perhaps this isn’t the venue to say it. However, as you pointed out, there are some real positive ones that are anonymous as well. That’s certainly their right.

    Great job!

    –Eric Jefcoat

  • Jim // Mar 24th 2005 at 8:25 pm

    Great job Bud!

    I enjoyed listening to your podcast and went back and made some very simple changes on my blog to better identify myself. Your concerns about student safety are very valid. I do think the more we can open our classrooms up to parents to see what we are thinking and doing the better we will be.

    I work with teachers. I know that some of them following what I write. I wrote one entry that I didn’t think was negative, but others did. I didn’t intend it to sound the way it did. I guess that is the difference between speaking and writing. People can see your feelings as well. Since then I have been careful about things I say about people.

    Again, you made me think. That’s good.

    Thanks,

    jim

  • Darren Kuropatwa // Mar 25th 2005 at 8:47 pm

    I enjoyed your podcast as well. I found you by following a link on Jim’s blog. You’ve made some excellent points. There’s a tension here that I would be interested in hearing the opinions of the edublogosphere on.

    On the one hand, we need to protect the identities of our students for their own safety. Young people don’t always make the best judgements as evinced by the recent news item about young girls exposing themselves on webcams, mistakenly thinking that only the one friend they send the image to will ever see it. (Lots of issues here; I mention it simply as an extreme example of why student identities must be protected.) Reasons for protecting student identities are legion.

    The tension pulling us in the opposite direction is the one you podcasted on. The need to be transparent about who we are and keeping the level of conversation positive and professional even when we disagree. My advice to my students on my classroom blog has been to use only their first names or nicknames so that we can identify each other easily. I’ve also advised them to keep their names disconnected from their images; to use avatars (a graphic or picture representative of them but not of them) instead. One of my students brought this up on our blog the day the issue came up in class. Coincidentally, it was my very first podcast. ;-)

  • Carlos Toledo // Jul 20th 2005 at 2:42 pm

    I would like to invite you to listen my podcast for your class of Spanish.

    I’ll be here in USA untill august and I would like to be in touch with some teacher podcaster.

    Carlos Toledo
    chilepodcast@gmail.com

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