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Yes, that’s what I am doing. In a way, the channel’s label and branding has always been (to my mind) overly IT-centric, given that a lot of the stuff — from Moira Gunn, from PopTech — has been of broader interest.

WOW that’s 4 comments on a single post. Never done that before :-)

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Regards
Parag

Thanks for clarifying what you meant by mashup.

When I first read your post, I thought you might be meaning to introduce short snippets of audio from SIC into your discussion on ITC.

So, while discussing something, you would play a small relevant piece from SIC and either discuss it with the interviewee or just add that piece as yet another thought on what is already being discussed.

Forgive me for being a bit slow on this one, but I am still not very clear how you would explicitly link SIC and ITC. Would it be by mentioned an SIC podcast (with some content) in your ITC podcast? Or perhaps by making the connection in the show notes?

In any case, I look forward to whatever you are planning.

I think there are areas where educational mashups will provide value. One thing that education (through text books) lacks is the perspectives of experts. Education is usually focussed on getting the facts, while their application is something that students learn at work. At least I have been seeing a lot of this in software development. I don’t know if the same applies for other fields as well.

Since technology changes so rapidly it is extremely difficult to capture these things in text books. We are more likely to find them in newsgroup discussions, blogs, and podcasts. Also perspectives and best practices are very well captured as conversations (in podcasts).

An educational podcast would be of a lot of value as an extension to the main lecture. So for example a teacher in a Java class can create a podcast mashup of how to use exceptions correctly. Some of the thoughts may be his own, which are intertwined with audio from podcast discussions or screencasts that already exist. Listening to such material after the lecture will give the students a better understanding of the topic. It may be possible for the teacher to create the entire screencast or podcast by himself, but I still prefer the mashup because we can reuse material that already exists, and it also adds more voices to the explanation. If the teacher makes the entire episode, the perspectives and opinions will be primarily his, while through a mashup we can present different (often opposing) perspectives.

However, even as I say this, my thoughts are not based on actual experience. It is more of a theory which I hope to try out in the next few months. I will report my observations on my blog :-)

I think the word “mashup” was probably ill-chosen here. I didn’t mean ripping and recombining bits of individual shows, which is currently not easily achievable, though it would indeed be interesting and useful.

Nor did I mean recombining shows from different channels, which is of course easily done.

I meant mixing the sensibilities of ITConversations (tech) and SIConversations (social innovation) so that those two sets of concepts and concerns are more frequently and explicitly connected.

Anyway, that’s what I’m increasingly trying to do on my own show.

I too have thought of mashing up podcats a few times. I want to create educational podcasts and screencasts on programming with Java. Something I’d like to include along with the explanation is the opinion and perspectives of practitioners on various API’s. I often hear good stuff on podcasts like JavaPosse and ITConversations (even though ITC is not really Java), that I can mashup into my educational podcast to create a very rich learning experience.
I was delighted to read a post by you on podcast mashups.

Do you think such educational mashups will provide good learning value for listeners?

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Regards
Parag

PodShow Channel Control

Originally uploaded by adamcurry

A rare screenshot from our special sandbox where Andrew and Devon are working on the PodShow Channel Control. (codename: ‘Cheddar’)
The MashBoard’s player sh…