Audiocasting - Confusion in Motion

I love rock music in most of its forms, but I'm gonna be frank.
I don't even know what some of the songs are about.
There was even a time where songwriters literally wouldn't tell you what the song's message was. I have listened to interviews from songwriters like Don McLean. He was asked what "American Pie" was about.
And he won't give a straight answer.
I always enjoyed "Talk Shows on Mute" by Incubus, and I feel like, in listening to it, now, I have a bit more of a sense. I certainly hadn't read "1984" yet when I first heard this song. So, mabye it's a context thing. Maybe you have to have more pop culture knowledge to get the song.

Contrast "Talk Shows on Mute" with this super-sweet Foo Fighters song, "Best of You":
No ambiguity there.
King & Cox (2011) recommend that podcasts can be used to dive deeper into more difficult content, but Brookfield (Brookfield, 2015, p.25) notes that traditional college-age students can feel like their learning journies are making them "leave their own identities in the past." This might seem like a tenuous link to the songs and the texts. However, selection bias acknowledged, I'm a big fan of challenging the learners I work with.

In my own experience as a musician, I have an involuntary negative reaction to being coached on thing I already know.
The negative reaction is mostly against myself... Why didn't you do what you already know to do so that the coach/director could tell you something new? So, I tend to watch what they do, find the part that isn't working, and challenge them to overcome what is preventing their success. Like the college students that Brookfield describes, I have a way of challenging people to be more than they thought.
I think that I, as King & Cox (2011) mention is the case with faculty, am definitely in the camp of facilitators who feel far better about their skills of communicating face-to-face.
Key pro of podcasting
Listening to Catt's podcast, I felt struck that a real advantage of podcasts is the human interest. I will say, quite bluntly, that I often find myself disinterested with late-night talk show guests; I just want to see the monologue of the comedian, laugh, and move on with my life. But, perhaps with education podcasts, my mind can be opened by learning from people who aren't in the "rich and famous" demographic. So, for my chorus, I think I need to make more effort to reach out to my friends in the barbershop world to bring them in to our Zoom meetings like I have thought about doing to add interest.

Cons? Maybe "cautions" is a better word

As an artistic coach, entertainer, and speech judge, I try to keep my mind as open as I can to people's ideas; my way is likely not the best way for that particular presenter or ensemble, and for my chorus, I certainly can't think of everything.

But, I think what needs to be considered for integrating audio into a classroom setting is caution. It comes down to patience, and I have my own definition for patience:

Patience is the wisdom of understanding timing.

The biggest caution is choosing the right time to share your exciting content. In my podcast from the past course module week, my uncle describes how he loves being creative in putting his powerpoint podcasts together. I think anyone who loves their subject is going to love creating a work of deliberate instruction, but just because we have made it doesn't mean that we can use it right away. I believe the professional educators refer to this as "sequencing."


A question for you, dear reader:
Anybody else get frustrated writing a post like this by thinking that you're falling short of saying enough? There are so many angles to this discussion. I find that the longer I go into this program, the more I feel like saying because I know more angles to look at topics.

But, especially with text content, brevity is key. You just kinda have to take an athlete's mindset and say, "well, I put my heart into it and did what I did within the time I had. I will have to accept feeling like I failed in some way."

I reflect on the pro and caution that I have shared, and I think... man, I still don't know. The longer into this program I go, the more I think I feel that knowledge isn't even a real thing. I think I'm just becoming more comfortable with uncertainty, with stating what I see and what I feel. After that, whatever happens happens. I think that the goal of using in courses asynchronous audio like podcasts should be to live in that nebulous space between the strange, uncertain world of "Talk Shows on Mute" and the super-blunt, emotional rawness of "Best of You".

I hope that some of that makes sense.
I confess my brain is fried from picking up extra shifts the last few days ands trying to squeeze this in.
I may read this tomorrow morning, horrified at my own ambiguity.

References:

Brookfield, S.D. (2015). The skillful teacher: On technique, trust, and responsiveness in the classroom. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

King, K. & Cox, T. (2011). The professor’s guide to taming technology. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing