Posted 11/25/2005 by Steve McCarty

There was an interesting article "Podcasting hits the mainstream" in the regional Kansai Scene magazine, Issue 66, November 2005, pp. 10-11. On p. 11, the author, Kym Hutcheon, writes: "If you are interested in cross-cultural issues, Japancasting, hosted by Osaka Jogakuin College professor Steve McCarty, is well worth your time."

In my college blog I have written in Japanese 1) the details about the Eigo Kyoiku magazine column mentioned in the previous post and 2) a forthcoming Podcaster Interview (in Japanese) in a book on studying English through podcasting due out around mid-December 2005 from the ALC publishing company in Tokyo. Readers of Japanese see: http://commune.wilmina.ac.jp/weblog/waoe/2005/11/index.html

My online library Website in Japanese is at:
http://www.waoe.org/steve/jpublist.html

Posted 10/20/2005 by Steve McCarty

The Japancasting podcasting blog has been well received in Japan and abroad.

The Stanford JGuide or Japan WWW Virtual Library lists only one regular blog
along with Japancasting under Society & Culture > Weblogs & Commentary
"Podcast blogs. Directory of MP3 files with text summaries of broadcasts on Japanese culture,
history, society, etc. Links to scripts with photos and illustrations for reading while listening.
Links to online sources for further research."

On 18 Oct 2005 Japancasting received a 4-star rating, very useful for research,
from the Asian Studies WWW Virtual Library at the Australian National University:
The Asian Studies WWW Monitor: late Oct 2005 - Vol. 12, No. 15 (240)
and was in The top 500 resources from "The Asian Studies WWW Monitor".
Japancasting was also the first site of its kind in the Monitor and its blog above.

That led to posts to Michigan State's leading H-Net Discussion Networks on history
and contemporary issues, H-Japan and H-Asia.

Also, perhaps the most widely read journal on English education in Japan, Eigo Kyoiku
in Japanese, will have a column on technology in the December issue recommending
Japancasting for English as a Foreign Language study and pointing to the pioneering
work at Osaka Jogakuin College where I work in the second year of giving all students
iPods with English listening materials, the first school in the world to do so.

Meanwhile I've started the following two sites, connected with the
Computer Communication course I'm teaching this fall semester,
2005-06 (the second semester of the school year in Japan):

Wilmina Forest Blog waoe
http://commune.wilmina.ac.jp/weblog/waoe/
or
http://hail.wilmina.ac.jp/fw/dfw/blog/weblog/waoe/

Computer Communication WebCT course information page
http://hail.wilmina.ac.jp/fw/dfw/eclass/public/38900/index.html

Posted 9/27/2005 by Steve McCarty

WAOE discussions

WAOE-Views and other e-mail mailing lists have been changed
to the following BBS forum. Please log in with your WAOE User Name
and password that you can use also for the Members-Only site
entered from http://waoe.org/

The new discussion forum can be viewed freely at:
http://waoe.org/phpBB2/viewforum.php?f=2

The annual WAOE Board of Directors' Meeting, held in a WebBoard and
then the above discussion forum with online parliamentary procedures,
was adjourned today.

The presentation in Australia listed below on September 10th
on the nature of knowledge in new media is now available as a
podcast or Webcast (to listen with your computer). See Japancasting

Posted 9/09/2005 by Steve McCarty

Multilingual Podcasting, Journal Article, and Presentation in Australia

September 2005 starts out with a "Japancasting" podcast in English,
Japanese and Chinese, which takes good advantage of the medium:
http://stevemc.blogmatrix.com
(When listening by computer the Webcasts have to download first).

Also see this new journal article:
"Spoken Internet To Go: Popularization through Podcasting"
The JALT CALL Journal, 1(2)

Off to Australia until September 22nd to give a presentation on
"Definitions and Knowledge in Successive Educational Media"
at the International Conference on Pedagogies and Learning:
Meanings under the Microscope
at the University of Southern Queensland.
The presentation abstract and outline are available as a Web page
and the PowerPoint presentation is available as a file to download.

Posted 7/20/2005 by Steve McCarty

WAOE-affiliated podcasting blogs:

WAOE Community Audio Learning Project
by Nick Bowskill
http://ad1nxb.blogmatrix.com/

Mike Warner
http://mwarner.blogmatrix.com/

Cliff Layton
http://layton.blogmatrix.com/

Japancasting
http://stevemc.blogmatrix.com/

Collegially,
Steve McCarty
Online library -> http://www.waoe.org/steve/epublist.html
Spoken library -> Japancasting: http://stevemc.blogmatrix.com
"Cultural, Disciplinary and Temporal Contexts of e-Learning
and English as a Foreign Language."
eLearn Magazine: Research Papers, April 2005 [new URL]:
http://www.elearnmag.org/subpage.cfm?section=research&article=4-1

Posted 7/07/2005 by Steve McCarty

Spoken Internet: Webcasting and Podcasting

Since 1997 most of my writings have been accessible through the Internet, but now new technologies and faster connections herald the advent of spoken Internet. I and probably you have many ideas for content. What I've done so far is to set up a podcasting blog as WAOE colleague Nick Bowskill has done at Blogmatrix with the WAOE Community Audio Learning Project.

I set up one entitled Japancasting
http://stevemc.blogmatrix.com/
Stream URL:
http://stevemc.blogmatrix.com/index.xml

The first entry was to digitally record a speech on Japanese education that I gave to American schoolteachers. The digital recorder, a tiny Japanese gadget, fits into a USB port, so I started with a .wma file for Windows Media Player. To make it a podcast, I converted the file to the .mp3 format. But the MP3 file is over 20 times heavier, so Webcasting may be preferred in this case for Windows users.

Ordinarily I, Japanese students and colleagues who are willing, can just speak into a mic attached to my computer, and files can be podcast with the Sparks program of Blogmatrix. It is free for a month, then as little as $10, from http://www.blogmatrix.com

For Japancasting to serve multiple audiences including learners of English, I am also offering scripts of the Webcasts and podcasts at Websites linked from Japancasting, the podcasting blog. So people can read the script or a similar outline while listening from the Japancasting site, by opening a new browser window to access both Web pages at once. Or people can print out the script from its Web page and read it while listening to their iPod or other MP3 player.

This process could be called getting unwired, because not even a network or wireless connectivity, where even Internet-enabled mobile phones are wired part of the way when routed through servers, is needed at that stage. People are still connected to the message, though, and the social network, so it is still connectivity but transcending networks.

The name "Japancasting" does not seem to have been taken, by the way, by any comparable entity, so this is at least a poor man's copyright. The following podcasting scripts are available to view so far in conjunction with Japancasting:

Stakes and Stakeholders in the Japanese Educational System
http://www.waoe.org/president/podscripts/japanese_education.html

The Woman Diver
http://www.waoe.org/president/podscripts/woman_diver.html

Peace Dialogue among Religions
[First year students of English have already performed it (see photo above)]
http://www.waoe.org/president/podscripts/peace_among_religions.html

Reincarnation or What?
http://www.waoe.org/president/podscripts/psychology_of_religion.html

There are all sorts of meaningful stories, aspects of contemporary Japan, and other content that I plan to make available, spoken as well as written. Please subscribe to Japancasting to receive new podcasts as they become available.

Steve McCarty in Osaka

Posted 5/31/2005 by Steve McCarty

The following article has come out, which I hope will be widely discussed:

"Cultural, Disciplinary and Temporal Contexts of e-Learning and English as a Foreign Language"
eLearn Magazine: Research Papers, April 2005.
New York: Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).
http://www.elearnmag.org/subpage.cfm?section=research&article=4-1

ABSTRACT
This article sheds light on some important dimensions at the interface of
technology and pedagogy. A general analytical approach is proposed to
understand the cultural, disciplinary and temporal contexts behind any
specialized field or concept. With this tool for understanding, two
seemingly unrelated disciplines,  e-Learning and teaching English as a
Foreign Language (EFL), can be seen in parallel. Japanese and other
Asian learning styles are reviewed to illustrate the cultural context,
particularly when utilizing e-learning with non-native users of English.
The universality or limitations of the Western e-learning paradigm
when transplanted into a non-Western culture are also examined.
Discourse on e-learning among EFL teaching practitioners in East Asia
then illustrates disciplinary and temporal contexts, as these dimensions
bring order to e-learning concepts defined variously on the Web.
An actual graduate school course on online education in Japan also
demonstrates how the cultural context must be considered for learning
to be transformative. Overall, e-learning concepts are distinguished in
the fuller dimensionality of their cultural, disciplinary and temporal
contexts. Applied to other fields as well, this approach may shed light
on the limitations of dictionaries and the whole problem of definitions.

Posted 3/25/2005 by Steve McCarty

At Osaka Jogakuin College in 2005 at age 55:



New online article published by a think tank
at the International University of Japan:
"Global Communications in a Graduate Course on Online Education
at the University of Tsukuba"

ABSTRACT

This article describes an intensive course on the theory and practice
of online education taught at the national University of Tsukuba
Graduate School of Education in Japan's Science City near Tokyo
in early 2004. Conducted in a networked computer lab, the course
was distributed in space and media to the utmost, while being fully
hybrid with the instructor in the classroom throughout the course.
WebCT platforms in the U.S. and Australia were utilized, with
HorizonLive and Wimba for synchronous and asynchronous Internet
voice technologies integrated into WebCT, and online mentors in
the U.S., England, Malaysia and Brazil engaging the students in
audioconferences, text chatting and other Web-based communications.
There is an abridged version of the article, but the full version
includes many colorful illustrations and can serve as a tutorial
to virtual learning environments that are usually inaccessible
behind password protection. Conditions of a globalized classroom
were reflected in graduate student testimonies indicating that
their learning was transformative and empowering. Both learning
with new information and communication technologies (ICT) and a
constructivist approach were welcomed by the learners, indicating
compatibility with the Japanese learning style and a positive form
of globalization realized in a globalized classroom.

McCarty, S. (2005, March 25). Global communications in a
graduate course on online education at the University of Tsukuba.
GLOCOM Platform, Colloquium #60. Tokyo: Japanese Institute of
Global Communications, International University of Japan.
Full version (PDF format)
Abridged version (HTML Web page linked to the full version)

Note: If your Adobe Reader prompts you to download fonts for the
Japanese language in the last five pages, it will not be necessary
for most people so long as you can view the English.

Collegially, Steve McCarty, Professor, Osaka Jogakuin College, Japan
President, World Association for Online Education (WAOE) Online library 

Posted 2/13/2005 by Steve McCarty

Multilingual WAOE Home 

Posted 1/18/2005 by Steve McCarty

Organizational and Japanese Websites updated:

The following Websites have been updated.
Please check them out to be active in the organization:

World Association for Online Education (WAOE) President

WAOE Organizational Page

WAOE in Japanese

Thank you,

Steve McCarty