Category: General

Listening to podcasts has grown in popularity and there are podcasts for every taste. To subscribe to a podcast most of us use a “pod catcher”, this is software that allows users to subscribe to the RSS for a podcast and keeps a designated number of episodes until we can get to them.

This post describes an app that I don’t use on a regular basis, but I discovered it has one advantage over other pod listening apps. Because it is provided by Google, it takes advantage of Google search to locate podcasts you might miss on your own. You can search for the name of a podcast or you can search by topic and see what you can find.

The Google podcast service can be used from a desktop computer or from an app. The following description is based on the use of the iOS app.

You populate your app with the feeds from the podcasts you want to follow. The Google app offers multiple ways to do this. The explore option (bottom of image) provides multiple opportunities – a search box, popular categories, and popular podcasts and episodes.

However you want to follow, you go through the same sequence to subscribe and then play. In the following image, I have used the search box to find a podcast called “Check this out.” The Google app has located this podcast and I then use the subscribe button.

Once subscribed, episodes begin to appear. I can either play a specific episode or add an episode to my cue.

The capability of the Google pod listening app I find most powerful is the opportunity to search for phrases I generate rather than relying on the system provided by the app. In this case, I searched for the phrase “educational technology” and located several podcasts I could explore.

I thought I should make an effort to offer a resource for Earth Day. I have concluded that the most important step for any average citizen is to become informed enough to realize the seriousness of this problem as an initial step to promoting and supporting the political will to take the steps necessary to address the multiple interrelated problems. I have read several sources on climate challenge and recommend a book by Bill Gates as both readable and I believe realistic.

Some important arguments:

1. This is a global challenge and it would be unfair if the wealthy countries that have had the major role in creating the climate crisis expected the same commitments from poorer countries in addressing the problem. The wealthy countries have built their wealth partly being doing the things that used cheap energy and should not expect those attempting to build a better economy to ignore these same energy sources (e.g., coal, oil) and construction materials (e.g., concrete) as they attempt to do better.
   1. Quote from book – To have any hope of staving off disaster, the world’s biggest emitters—the richest countries—have to get to net-zero emissions by 2050.
2. Addressing climate change at this point must involve more than reducing doing more damage as the damage done takes so long to dissipate. For example, slowing down carbon dioxide and methane production will not be enough. We need to remove these gases from the atmosphere.
   1. Quote from book – to avoid the worst climate scenarios, at some point we’ll not only need to stop adding more gases but actually need to start removing some of the gases we have already emitted.
3. Innovation and research are the only ways to solve the problem. These activities require investment and many attempts will not be successful. This means we cannot rely on companies worried about their bottom lines to solve the problem.
   1. Quote from book – When it comes to climate change, I know innovation isn’t the only thing we need. But we cannot keep the earth livable without it. Techno-fixes are not sufficient, but they are necessary.
   2. engaging in the political process is the most important single step that people from every walk of life can take to help avoid a climate disaster.
4. The cost of better energy sources must be lower than the cost of old energy sources. This may require determining the full cost of old energy sources and adding fees so that cost to the environment can be addressed.
   1. Quote from book – oil is cheaper than a soft drink. I could hardly believe this the first time I heard it, but it’s true. Here’s the math: A barrel of oil contains 42 gallons; the average price in the second half of 2020 was around $42 per barrel, so that comes to about $1 per gallon. Meanwhile, Costco sells 8 liters of soda for $6, a price that amounts to $2.85 a gallon. 
   2. Today, when businesses make products or consumers buy things, they don’t bear any extra cost for the carbon involved, even though that carbon imposes a very real cost on society.
5. Many are frustrated with wealthy tech entrepreneurs proposing and even funding solutions to problems in other areas (e.g., education, climate). Gates recognizes this reaction and admits many proposals have not been successful. However, Gates works hard at becoming knowledgeable and relies on experts who guide the areas explores and invests his money. 
   1. The world is not exactly lacking in rich men with big ideas about what other people should do, or who think technology can fix any problem. I think more like an engineer than a political scientist, and I don’t have a solution to the politics of climate change.

Gates offers a data-based and realistic analysis. He begins by providing data that summarizes the sectors responsible for greenhouse gas emissions arguing all of these sectors must be considered rather than attending only to the the traditional targets (e.g., self driving cars, solar panels). His approach is surprisingly optimistic given the many changes he argues must occur, but he argues that governments must encourage and support the scientific community to develop methods to address these multiple challenges. This is the only way he sees the world taking on what he sees as the massive challenge we face.

My last post regarding the practicality of the use of Google docs to individualize student learning was probably a bit harsh. The core of my position was that to individualize instruction Google forms makes more sense as actions taken within a form (student-constructed responses to tasks and competency checks) are automatically forwarded to a Google spreadsheet making tracking and evaluation by a teacher more practical. While docs are more flexible than forms, student additions to a doc require copies of the doc when it comes to tasks such as competency checks.

After reviewing sections of the Hyperdoc handbook again, I did come across a strategy the authors recommended to solve this problem. The authors propose that students open a shared Google doc, make a copy that they work on, and then share a link to this copy back to the teacher for feedback and evaluation.

The FCC is offering an app for iOS and android to allow citizens to collect broadband access data for personal information and to support the government organization’s effort to better understand access issues (Verge article). Some screen captures follow. It was unclear to me when the term mobile broadband is used whether I am supposed to test the speed I get through my cable provider or through my phone company. Since the app recognizes both, I decided the FCC can sort out the data they want.

For the education community, I would think it would be very useful for these data to be differentiated by households with K12 students.

This blog has existed since 2002 which makes it about as old as a blog can be. The same goes for me. In this time, I have generated nearly 2000 posts. The oldest posts probably have little value for others unless you are interested in the history of educational technology. As I wrote about what interested me at the time, I was also documenting changes in what has become an important field within educational thinking and practice.

Most folks use blogs by reading content as it appears not making the effort to look at preceding posts unless the author purposeful links to this older content. Blogs provide several ways to explore the entire body generated by a blog author. I will explain the ways that come to mind as made available within this blog, but most of these options exist for other blogs as well.

If you look along the left-hand sidebar of this blog (unless you are reading this on a phone, then you will likely find an icon – three lines – that provide access to the sidebars and main window), you should find most all but one of these options.

First, most bloggers will display a link to the archive for their work. This should allow a user to identify the content published by year and month.

The other two opportunities that appear in the sidebar include search and categories. A blog author may or may not add these opportunities to his/her blog. Both options are identified below.

I use a Google search service that returns hits for a search term specific to my blog and also allows more general search for the same term

The second approach identifies categories the author has identified as areas of emphasis in posts. I started using this system recently and have applied the category labels to the posts generated for the past 3-4 years.

Selecting a category will provide access to all posts associated with that category and will provide the blog author’s explanation of what that category represents.

Finally, an author may “tag” individual posts. These tags appear at the bottom of posts. Clicking on a tag will general past posts that have been tagged with the selected tag. The success of this technique in locating related content depends on how systematically the author has added tags to identify topics.

I encourage your use of these search options in this blog and in others you visit. When you find a post that interests you, see what else the author has to say about the topic.