I am a big fan of podcasts because they can be enjoyed while multitasking. Check out my recommended list below. I particularly enjoyed “Joyce Carol Oates Says Teaching Creative Writing Is Like Training Boxers” and “What Will ChatGPT Mean for Teaching?”
Podcasts are audio programs that you can listen to on various devices and platforms, such as your smartphone, computer, or smart speaker. Podcasts cover a wide range of topics, from news and politics to comedy and culture, and often feature interviews, stories, or discussions. Podcasts are usually produced in episodes, which can be downloaded or streamed online. Some podcasts are free, while others require a subscription or a payment to access premium content.
Podcasts are a popular and convenient way to learn new things, stay informed, or be entertained. You can find podcasts that suit your interests and preferences, and listen to them whenever and wherever you want. Podcasts can also help you improve your listening skills, expand your vocabulary, and discover new perspectives.
These are the highlights from EdSurge. It’s not surprising that the most popular podcast episode of 2023 on EdSurge was about ChatGPT. In fact, three out of the top 10 episodes of the year discussed different ways that new forms of artificial intelligence are affecting teaching and learning.
1. What Will ChatGPT Mean for Teaching?
A new AI chatbot can spit out long-form answers to just about any question, in a way that sounds eerily human. Students are already figuring out they can use it to write their essays, and educators are pondering how to adapt. This episode originally ran in January of 2023 and was early in describing the classroom impacts of these new technologies.
2. How Instructors Are Adapting to a Rise in Student Disengagement
Professors are finding that they can’t just go back to teaching as they did before the pandemic and expect the same result. It takes more these days to hold students’ attention and convince them to show up. Check out part two of our series reported from the back of large lecture classes to see how teaching is changing.
3. ChatGPT Has Colleges in Emergency Mode to Shield Academic Integrity
Many professors are expressing frustration and even “terror” over ChatGPT, the latest AI tool that students may be using to write their papers for them. That has academic honor committees scrambling to revise policies and provide resources to instructors.
4. Hoping to Regain Attention of Students, Professors Pay More Attention to Them
Getting and holding the attention of students is more difficult since the pandemic, according to many college instructors around the country. So they’re looking for inspiration from other sectors — including video game design and elementary school classrooms — to keep lectures interesting. The episode is part two of a narrative series we did on student disengagement.
5. Lessons From This ‘Golden Age’ of Learning Science
Experts have described this as a ‘golden age’ of discovery in the area of learning science, with new insights emerging regularly on how humans learn. So what can educators, policymakers and any lifelong learner gain from these new insights?
6. How to Best Teach Immigrant and Refugee Students, and Why It Matters
Schools are finding better ways to teach recent immigrant and refugee students. A new book by a high school history and civics teacher collects innovative strategies, and argues that getting the issue right is crucial for building a strong democracy.
7. Inside the Quest to Detect (and Tame) ChatGPT
Even before ChatGPT was released, AI experts were exploring how to detect language written by this new kind of bot. We talk with one of those experts, plus others who are seeking to build guardrails to help educators successfully adapt to the latest AI technology.
8. Why All of Us Could Use a Lesson in ‘Thinking 101’
Human brains are wired to think in ways that often lead to biased decisions or incorrect assumptions. A Yale University psychology professor has gathered highlights of what research says about the most common human thinking errors into a popular class at the university that she recently turned into a book.
9. Joyce Carol Oates Says Teaching Creative Writing Is Like Training Boxers
Acclaimed author Joyce Carol Oates has a passion for working with students, but it’s one she has trouble putting into words. Maybe, she allows, it’s “like a chess grandmaster might play chess with a really brilliant 12-year-old and come close to losing — the experience is somehow pleasant in itself.”
10. How Hollywood Stereotypes About Teachers Stifle Learning
Romanticized depictions of teaching in popular culture fail to capture the way teaching actually works — and they create an unattainable model that stifles the impact of teachers and professors, argues Jessamyn Neuhaus, who teaches courses about popular culture and runs the Center of Teaching Excellence at SUNY Plattsburgh.
