Listen and Learn with These Teaching and Education Podcasts
Professional development can be challenging, what with keeping up with blogs, following up on tweets and retweets, poring through journals, and attending conferences and workshops. One way to keep up with news and keep abreast of ideas is by listening to podcasts. Podcasts are an ideal resource for teachers with long commutes, and they can be a companion while working out or a fun distraction while cleaning.
The sheer number of podcasts available online can be overwhelming, and while many have an educational bent, a handful of podcasts focus on teaching, learning and brain science. This list is meant to give a starting point for people looking to use podcasts to keep up with edtech, learning theory and pedagogical practices. Podcasts are listed in alphabetical order.
Cult of Pedagogy
“[…] there was a time when you could follow the formula, and the formula was basically work hard at school, go to college and climb a corporate ladder. But because of the complex global economy, because of the creative economy, the information economy, our students are going to have to navigate a maze. The ladder is now a maze. And because it’s a maze, what do they need in order to navigate that? They need to be able to engage in iterative thinking, creative thinking, critical thinking, they need to know how to pivot, how to change, how to revise, how to persevere. They need to solve complex problems. They need to think divergently.”
-Episode 96: “What Is the Point of a Makerspace?”
The Cult of Pedagogy podcast focuses on all aspects of education: edtech, educational reform, classroom management and more. Host Jennifer Gonzalez shares research and news on timely topics and evergreen concerns, with recent episodes on note-taking and oral history in the classroom. She also shares exhaustive show notes on the podcast’s site and on the Cult of Pedagogy blog.
The Knowledge Project
“One of the best approaches is to use the Pomodoro Technique. Set everything aside. When you are studying, you want to be really intently focused, and don’t just look at something and think you know it. That is one of the biggest mistakes people do in anything. That’s particularly common in math and science. You could look at the answer, and it just seems obvious, and so then you don’t actually work it yourself, and so then it turns out you didn’t know it.”
-Episode 31: “Learning How to Learn: My Conversation with Barbara Oakley”
The Knowledge Project, hosted by Shane Parrish, is a companion to the Farnam Street blog. On this podcast, he explores ideas about knowledge, learning and mental models. Unlike many of the podcasts on this list, The Knowledge Project doesn’t approach learning within the sphere of formal education. Instead, Shane talks with high-performing individuals on how they engage in learning — people ranging from boxers to writers to poker players to course designers.
Leading Lines
“When you leave the classroom and it hits you that something you’re seeing is what we’re talking about, is what we’re learning about, that’s what I want from you.”
-Episode 40: “Margaret Rubega”
A production of Vanderbilt University, Leading Lines interviews educators in a wide variety of disciplines to discuss how they incorporate technology into their classrooms. From tweeting about birds for an ornithology course (#birdclass) to using video-conferencing technology to connect incarcerated students with outside institutions, the teachers in these interviews offer interesting edtech ideas while sharing impactful stories.
The Learning Scientists Podcast
“Well, while programming could be an end product to computational thinking, it is not what computational thinking is. Computational thinking is also not an extra course that we should take, that we should teach and students should learn. It should be integrated into different subjects across domains.”
-Episode 23: “Executive Function and Computational Thinking with Rina Lai”
The Learning Scientists Podcast is a companion to the Learning Scientists Blog, which focuses on the intersection of cognition science and learning. Although the podcast is aimed at educators, it’s also useful for lifelong learners. Past episodes have explored computational thinking (explored at length on Tech-Based Teaching) and executive function; reflection and retrieval practice; dual coding; and interleaving.
MindShift
“It’s the little interactions versus the big interventions that make the most impact.”
-Overcoming Childhood Trauma: How Parents and Schools Work to Stop the Cycle
MindShift, affiliated with NPR and the KQED blog of the same name, tackles some of the more hands-on aspects of teaching, rather than the technical side. By focusing on the more emotive side of education, it reflects the realities of the student-teacher dynamic in schools today. A recent episode discusses childhood trauma, while earlier episodes focus on restorative discipline, listening while reading and more.
The STEM Read Podcast
“When you see good classrooms, you see collaboration. You see students are understanding what they’re learning, and you see that they’re enjoying what they’re doing.”
-The STEM Read Podcast: “Inquiry with Zack Gilbert and M. T. Anderson”
This podcast created at Northern Illinois University connects books and STEM in a way that encourages readers to be makers. By using books as a conduit for talking about news (such as discussing #MeToo and children’s literature) and hot topics in education (such as inquiry- and project-based learning), The STEM Read Podcast is part interview series, part readers’ advisory.
Teaching in Higher Ed
“Students get excited when they’re confronted with problems which they have confidence to explore.”
-Episode 206: “Inquiry-Based Learning with Jeffery Galle”
Offering advice through interviews, this podcast functions as faculty development for professors and lecturers working in higher education. Topics range from the value of reflection, the expanding definition of STEM education, Agile education and more. There are over 200 episodes in the archive to explore.
Teaching Online Podcast
“And I think a lot of it is just if we just sort of accept the functionality of the learning management system without really critically thinking about how to design for higher-ordered thinking and so forth, we can stumble into a bunch of multiple-choice tests that are just recall-oriented, for instance.”
— Episode 37: “6 Deadly Sins of Online Teaching”
Online learning is a rapidly expanding part of the educational landscape, and this podcast delves into issues particular to online and hybrid classes. Whether they’re discussing academic integrity or the power of online storytelling, hosts Tom and Kelvin from the University of Central Florida share their experiences in the field through casual conversation and research discussions.
Beyond these suggestions, look around to find podcasts relevant to your field of study. For example, linguists might enjoy some of these linguistics podcasts. Podcasts have even been used as a classroom resource, with series being incorporated into curricula and students learning through their empathetic storytelling.
There are also single episodes of podcasts that might be useful, even if the podcast itself isn’t based on learning or teaching. For example, this interview about embodied cognition on the Voices of VR podcast touches on dance and computational thinking.
For more podcast ideas, you can look on places such as Stitcher, Pocket Casts or Player FM. Feel free to suggest additional podcasts in the comments, particularly those about computational thinking!
About the blogger:
Jesika Brooks
Jesika Brooks is an editor and bookworm with a Master of Library and Information Science degree. She works in the field of higher education as an educational technology librarian, assisting with everything from setting up Learning Management Systems to teaching students how to use edtech tools. A lifelong learner herself, she has always been fascinated by the intersection of education and technology. She edits the Tech-Based Teaching blog (and always wants to hear from new voices!).
