Changes
Published by steve March 8th, 2006 in Podcasting
As John McDowall states in his recent post of the same name, “It has been a long time since I last posted.”
After several weeks of reflection (SCU is big on reflection)in late November, I decided that I was not meant to be an elementary school math teacher. The students and my fellow teachers were great. I just found the dynamics of an elementary school so completely opposite to my Silicon Valley career. I decided that the logistics of teaching could quickly extinguish my enthusiasm. One doesn’t become a teacher for the prestige or pay. You have to love what you are doing.
I have had a writer’s block about this subject. Unlike, John, I have had to many topics I would like to explore: NCLB, CTA, ELD, IEP, CBEST, GT … the list goes on and on. Just a quick comment now. If I could change one thing about our California schools, it would be this: reduce class size to a maximum of twenty students across the board. From pre-school to the UC system. Good teachers would have the time to be great, average teachers would be less prone to letting students fall through the cracks, and bad teachers would affect less students.
In mid December, with my classes over I started to think about what I would do next. Three days later, as these things tend to happen here in the Valley, I got an email from John. He said a friend of his, John Furrier, was starting a company called PodTech.net and was looking for some help. A quick breakfast at the Creamery and a dinner with John & John at the Empire Tap Room and I was on board.
I am excited. Podcasting represents a new way for companies to communicate with their customers. The technology used by traditional media imposes some very unnatural restrictions: limited channels that are broadcast to very large, diverse audiences. Podcasting, like other Internet based media, can serve large quantities of content to many very small, specialized audiences on demand. And the consumer can very easily be part of a larger dialogue with the producer.
Many companies will take the old broadcasting models and graft them onto podcasting. PodTech will be under great pressure to do so as well, and I am sure will succumb in some cases. We, however, intend to explore new ways of conducting the conversation between companies and their customers. Stay tuned.