21 May 2016

#PodcastPD - #100DayProject - Day 051

Image Soure: Pixabay.com
I am a fan of podcasts for many reasons and one of them is for the amazing opportunity I have to learn while doing other things. Many people are able to, I hate to use the word multi-task because I don't believe that is an actual thing but it is the best word here, do more than one thing at a time and listening while working is a great way to do just that. I am often found listening to a podcast while working unless I'm writing or reading because I feel working with words and listening to different words doesn't work for me. So I have a lot of podcasts in my player of choice, Instacast.

Tonight while doing the dishes, I was listening to two very different podcasts and yet, I feel that I learned greatly from both. First up was the amazing House of EdTech podcast with Chris Nesi. It was episode 60 with Jennifer Gonzalez of Cult of Pedagogy and it was amazing! Jennifer discussed her new book-thing called The Teacher's Guide to Tech 2016 Edition and it sounds like an amazing resource. This book-thing (she didn't call it a book or ebook because it's this really crazy linked-up resource that is loaded with 255 pages worth of technology tools for teachers to use in their classrooms. The episode was great because she and Chris discussed a couple of the tools in a little more detail and I've already decided I plan to send a link to some teachers I work with so they can get a start on better technology integration for next year. If you'd like to listen to this episode, you should definitely do it and then subscribe to the show because Chris releases a great new episode every two weeks and I always enjoy what I hear/learn. As a side note, I was delighted to hear my voice on the episode in the form of some feedback I sent Chris about the previous episode where AJ Bianco and Stacey Lindes took over the show and interviewed Chris. That was a fun episode and you should listen to that one as well.

Image Source: Chris Nesi

The other podcast I was listening to is called The Minimalists and it is done by The Minimalists Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus. While I'm not a minimalist yet, I still can enjoy listening to a couple of minimalists talk about their lives and how they live. This podcast is great for seeing another way of life, a simpler one that makes me want to embrace it so badly, and yet, maybe someday. While the podcast typically has both Joshua and Ryan, the episode I listened to was only Joshua, Episode 018 | Writing. It was a great episode that dealt with how to write better, something I am trying to do a lot more of these days.

In the episode, Joshua shares a number of great tips and a couple really stood out to me because of this #100DayProject I'm trying to complete. First, he says to write daily and I feel like I am doing that now. While I'm not writing at the same time each day, I still enjoy that I am writing almost every day. But someting that I have found from this #100DayProject is that I am really enjoying my writing time and I will probably continue writing eery day. Second, Joshua mentioned the need to not worry so much about the initial first draft and instead focus on getting all the words out so you can go back and edit it. He shared two great thoughts on editing that stood out to me, 1) you should spend 30% of your time writing and 70% editing and 2) writing is like sculpture except you have to first create the slab of "granite" to chip away at to find your statue underneath. I plan on sharing these ideas with my students because it's important for them to realize they need to focus first on getting words on the page before they can actually get the good stuff. He mentioned the fact that all of his books he's written or co-written started out much longer than they ended because they needed lots of ideas to find the best so they could get rid of the rest.

What an incredible night of learning and it was a Saturday! Using podcasts to learn is a great idea that's also a lot of fun. If you enjoy listening to podcasts then you should also consider joining the Twitter Chat/Blab.im show for #PodcastPD that happens every Sunday from 8:30-9pm Eastern Time. It's hosted by Stacey Lindes, Chris Nesi and AJ Bianco, three amazing New Jersey educators and friends. I hope to see you there!

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