Futures in Biotech - Podcast Professional Development

I just got done listening to the latest episode of Futures in Biotech, a podcast on the TWiT Network. The episode was about the project working to sequence the Neanderthal genome. I've mentioned this podcast in previous posts, but decided to go into more detail, because I think it has some real value for educators. Podcasts can of course be used directly with students, but more importantly can be used for your own professional development. I will never share the majority of the podcasts I listen to with my students, but I share the information I learn all the time.

Futures in Biotech is hosted by Marc Pelletier, a graduate student working in molecular biology. The podcast seeks to explain some of the cutting edge research in the world of genomics, molecular biology, and biochemistry in terms simple enough for normal people to understand. I'm not sure how well Pelletier does this, because as anyone who knows me could tell you, I'm anything but normal. Beyond being strange I have a Master's in Evolutionary Biology and have a strong education in the material presented in the podcast.

The format of Futures in Biotech has Pelletier, sometimes joined by co-host Leo Laporte, interviewing scientists on the front lines of research. In the latest episode Pelletier interviews Dr. Svente Paabo, Director of the Department of Genetics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and Dr. Thomas Jarvie, Technical Application Manage at 454 Life Sciences. Dr. Paabo is working to assemble a complete genome of our closest extinct relatives, the Neanderthal. Dr. Jarvie talked about how modern genome sequencing is accomplished and how it was being used for this project. All in all it was a very informative and thought provoking episode.

The one piece that made it even more thought provoking was a bit Pelletier replayed from a previous episode. In episode 8 Pelletier interviewed Dr. Drew Endy about synthetic biology. In that episode Dr. Endy talked about the importance of being able to synthetically build DNA to order and how in the next ten years we should reach a point where we can assemble whole genomes... This right in front of an episode about sequencing the whole genome for an extinct species was, for me, mind blowing. Imagine being able to bring back extinct species. We wouldn't need to have intact cells with intact nuclear DNA to clone these species. We just need enough DNA from enough cells to rebuild the complete genome.

This brought to mind some great ideas for discussions in bioethics. Is it ethical to clone animals from the past? Is it ethical not to? If it's not ethical to clone a human, is it ethical to clone a Neanderthal? Even though we can't do these things today we will likely be able to do them in the future and possibly even in the lifetimes of our students. Our technological advances often out pace society's ability to deal with them. Our society today, as a whole, doesn't posses the scientific literacy necessary to critically evaluate the value of or potential problems posed by new technologies.

Already some scientists are trying to bring back Mammoths. They seek to find frozen animals that may have intact testes so they can extract viable sperm to create an elephant-mammoth hybrid. Is this a good idea? Should we do this? Should we not? Is it a waste of money and resources that could be put to better use, or is it likely to lead to new important scientific discoveries?

Technorati Tags: podcast, netcast, education, falconphysics

Thank You Neil Gaiman (and podcast roundup)

Well, I ranted about Google's remaking Writely the other day, and I've gotten over it since then (plus I found the spell checker). Now I should sing the praises of Google. One of the netcasts I listen to is CrankyGeeks. The other day they had Neil Gaiman on. For those who don't know, he's an author of fantasy novels, short stories, and comicbooks/graphic novels.

Neil is a long time blogger and he uses www.blogger.com. He mentioned that he has a good relationship with the Blogger folks (Google) and makes recommendations quite often, and given his readership Google listens and implements changes. One thing I've noticed is that it has been a long time since I've lost a post I was working on. Apparently I have Neil to thank for that. He was getting tired of loosing long posts and so complained and Google fixed it. So, thank you Neil Gaiman (and Google). You've saved many hours of work for me.

What does this have to do with technology in education? There are many angles I could go with. I'm going with the angle of, "I Learn a lot from subscribing to netcasts." I subscribe to many podcasts, netcasts, vodcasts, videocasts or what ever you want to call them. Some I use with my classes and some are just for my education.

Here's a list of all the netcasts I subscribe to that I find educationally relevant. Some of these I would not share with students, but are for my own education. These are all available through iTunes. I've mentioned some of these in previous posts, but I figured I'd bring them all together in one place. You can check one of my previous posts to learn how to subscribe to podcasts.

VodCast

• Ask a Ninja - Not really very educational, but it showcases what can be done easily with a little creativity. Another blogging teacher I follow has used this format to push the bounds a little in his "Ask a Technology Ninja" instructional videos.
  
• Ctrl-Alt-Chicken - Another fun video series that helps illustrate the value of video over the internet.
  
• DL.TV - Here's one for me. It helps keep me up to date on the latest technology. It is hosted by a couple of guys from the old ScreenSavers show on TechTV.
  
• Mac Break - Great show that I've started watching since I got my MacBook. This is an HD program and looks great. The hosts walk you through different applications on the Mac and some of the features in Mac OSX.
  
• Dr. Carlson's Science Theater - Science demos by a science teacher (I think). Mildly entertaining, it showcases what you can do with videos and education.
  
• CHEM1000 Class Demos - Demos from a college level chemistry lecture. There's some good stuff here.
  
• Cranky Geeks* - This is is available as a video or audio netcast. I usually just listen to it.
  

Podcast

• Naked Scientist - This is one of my favorites. It's a one hour BBC radio show that covers several science news stories, answers caller questions, interviews scientists, and has kitchen science. Kitchen science are simple experiments you can do in your kitchen.
  
• Science Friday - This is actually an NPR weekly radio show hosted by Ira Flatow. You may remember Ira from the PBS show Newton's Apple. Topics range in all areas of science and Ira's guests on the show are the experts in those areas. Each weekly show typically covers at least two major stories (some cover 4-5 stories). Each story can be downloaded separately.
• Science Talk: The Podcast of Scientific American - Mainly consist of interviews with scientists featured in Scientific American. It also includes a feature called Totally Bogus where listeners are given four far fetched science stories and must identify the one that is Totally Bogus. The host tries to have fun and keep a lite tone.
  
• Science Magazine Podcast - Similar to the Scientific American podcast, this one interviews scientists from Scince Magazine but maintains a more serious tone.
  
• PopSci Podcast - Stories from the pages of Popular Science hosted by Jonathan Coulton. Coulton keeps a lite, humorous tone while interviewing scientists from his remote base on the moon.
  
• TWIT - This Week in Tech is the podcast that got me started listening to internet audio. This was the brainchild of the cast of the ScreenSavers from TechTV before it was bought and totally ruined by G4. This netcast is a round table of technology reporters discussing the big technology stories every week.
  
• Cranky Geeks* - Pannelists sit around and discuss recent technology news. They are cranky, as the name implies, and critically evaluate the news.
  
• Inside the Net - This podcast covers Web 2.0. The hosts interview the movers and shakers behind up and coming companies.
• Futures in Biotech - A biology grad student along with Leo Laporte interview scientists on the cutting edge of biotechnology.
• Geek!Ed! - A group of educators and technology folks from Pikney, Michigan get together every week to discuss issues related to technology in our schools. It's fun and informative, although they often venture into the realm of, "Education today doesn't work, so we should tear it all down and start over." While this may be true, it doesn't really help me as an educator get the job done in our current system. They start talking about how things ought to be without talking about how to get us there.

Technorati Tags: video, podcast, netcast, education, falconphysics

More podcasts

I posted about some of the podcasts I regularly listen to a couple of weeks ago. Those aren't the only ones I catch on a regular basis. Some of the other ones are:

Inside the Net - Hosted by Amber MacArthur and Leo Laporte, focuses on developments in Web 2.0. Amber and Leo interview the content creators and web designers who are developing some of the cooler things on the web.

Diggnation - Fun podcast (or vodcast) highlighting some of the top stories from Digg.com. Digg is a social bookmarking/news site focusing on technology. I've discovered lots of good things both from the podcast and from the web site. I should mention that Diggnation often has explicit language and always mentions drinking.

GEEK!ED! - I just discovered this one today and I've already downloaded and listened to four episodes. The primary focus of this podcast is educational technology. It is hosted by educators and is intended for educators. I discovered this one while playing with Podzinger.

Podzinger is not a podcast, but a search tool. It was the focus of this week's Inside the Net. Podzinger uses sophisticated voice recognition software to extract text from podcasts and make it searchable. You can search for what people said, not just what they put in their podcast descriptions. How cool is that?

How to get podcasts.

Yesterday I posted some of my favorite podcasts, but how do you get them? As I mentioned before, you don't need an iPod. The first applications for aggregating podcasts were written with iPods in mind but owning an iPod was never a prerequisite to listening to podcasts.

Basically, podcasts are RSS feeds. Will Richardson over at Weblogg-ed has written a great primer on what RSS means and how to use RSS feeds in education. As with any RSS feed you need an aggregator (that's a fancy way of saying you need a program to find and bring together all the content you want).

There is a wide variety of programs for pulling together all the podcasts you might want to listen to. I've used iPodder and iTunes. iPodder has been renamed to Juice. While I haven't used Juice, I suspect it is still a great product. I use iTunes. I started using iTunes long before I owned an iPod because I liked the way it organized my music files. iTunes also has a great podcast interface. I have run into very few podcasts that are not in the iTunes directory.

If your new to RSS and podcasts then I'd recommend you start with iTunes. All you need to do is download and install the application and then click on the "Podcast" menu button in the left frame. When the podcast library come up just click on "Podcast Directory" near the bottom of the window. Now just surf around and subscribe to the programs that seem interesting.

For more info on how podcasts and how to subscribe try:

• Wikipedia - Podcasting
• Wikipedia - Podcatchers (new word for aggregator). List of programs for Win, Mac, and Linux
  
• Science Friday - How to subscribe

Podcasts

There are some great science and technology podcasts out there. A podcast is basically an independent radio show. Unlike radio, however, you can download them and listen when you want to rather than listen to them live. The quality of podcasts varies greatly. Some are very amateurish and some are quite professional.

There are literally thousands of different podcasts out there ranging from audio blogs to professional news shows. Like blogs, some are updated frequently and some almost never.

One more thing before I list my favorites is you don't need an iPod to enjoy podcasts. You can actually use any MP3 player or just listen on your computer (I've heard you can even listen using your TiVo).

Below you will find my favorite Science and Technology podcasts. From most of the sites listed you can download individual programs or subscribe to the podcasts' feeds (more on this in a day or two).

Talk of the Nation - Science Friday
This is actually an NPR weekly radio show hosted by Ira Flatow. You may remember Ira from the PBS show Newton's Apple. Topics range in all areas of science and Ira's guests on the show are the experts in those areas. Each weekly show typically covers at least two major stories (some cover 4-5 stories). Each story can be downloaded separately.

Naked Scientists
The Naked Scientists Radio Show is broadcast in England. It is an hour long show done once a week that covers a number of stories each week. Each episode has an experiment you can do while listening. I've adapted some of these to use in my own classes.

Science Magazine and Scientific American
Both of these magazines have started releasing podcasts recently. So far they are pretty good, but it's hard to know if they will continue being good or even continue producing new material.

this WEEK in TECH
This week in Tech (TWiT) was started by some of the hosts from TechTV's Screen Savers (before TechTV was bought by G4). It covers big tech stories weekly. It's a lot of fun and has a lot of good information. Through the same site are a variety of other podcasts and video podcasts.