Click here to view an NBC interview
with Professor Berger

With new technologies come innovative ideas for incorporating those technologies into the classroom. The Engineering School at U.Va. is no exception; not only are faculty members here incorporating inventive podcast assignments into their own course curricula, they are also looking for ways to introduce podcasts into K-12 educational programming.

Take Edward Berger, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, for example. He charged his second-year Engineering School statics students with producing a six-minute podcast discussing a major, real-world engineering project and its impact. The class project divided the students into four-member student teams to produce podcasts that discussed projects such as: the Hoover dam, sustainable building practices encouraged by the LEED standard; the new Guggenheim museum in Bilbao, Spain; and the Three Gorges Dam on China´s Yangtze River. The podcasts also addressed how such projects impacted (or would impact) the economy, the environment, tourism or the local community.

Associate Professor
Edward Berger

Berger found that his students were more engaged by creating a podcast than writing a paper because the assignment allowed the students to express their passion and knowledge of engineering far beyond what was evident from the traditional assessments on weekly problem sets and tests. And, if college students were more engaged, certainly younger students would be. Why couldn´t podcasts be incorporated into K-12 educational programming?

Assistant Professor
Silvia Salinas Blemker

Silvia Salinas Blemker, assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, asked that same question. Like Berger, Professor Blemker uses innovative technology to further the educational experience of first-year engineering students. But, students in her ENGR162 course develop educational podcasts for a middle school audience that address the physics of sports.

Read more about Professor Berger´s podcast project at www.seas.virginia.edu/enews/enews_jan07/berger.php. See Professor Berger talk about podcasts by clicking here (QuickTime needed).

Listen to a presentation Professor Berger gave in March 2007 introducing Higher Ed 2.0 Web tools for blogging, podcasting and wikis.