No surprise here really. After all, students have been audio recording their lectures for as long as portable recorders have been around. The mildly interesting part is that there are a couple of companies in the education field that have gotten together to make this a way more polished product than some kid’s tape deck sitting on a table in a classroom. Tegrity has a software product called Tegrity Campus which would integrate with Blackboard’s Learning System software. Now for some hand-waving and voila – you have podcasts of every lecture that are available with other course materials via the Blackboard system. Pretty cool. So where was this stuff at my expensive college when I wanted to sleep in late, eh?
Of course, I can see the headlines now: “Students not attending class; downloading lectures instead”. Having class notes on the Web raised the same headlines and so did microcassette recorders. Sure, some students will do skip class, but until there are significant declines in attendance, schools are going to continue having traditional lectures because they work. Forget the sensational media headlines. The Web, software and podcasting are technologies that will help today’s student, and not be the crutches that former students may see them as.
Not much else to report on here, but if you’re getting burnt out studying, go find some toys and take a break!