Sunday, November 28, 2010
Monday, November 8, 2010
Mixed Tapes
Seeing the cassette recorder nestled onto the back shelf teased out memories of sitting in my bedroom during my teenage years spent listening to Chicago and K-Lite 106.3 and recording mixed-tapes for the young ladies I wanted to woo. Inserting the magnetic takes into the player and hitting record seemed like a magical process and I did not ever think that I would look back and describe the process in the same tone of voice my father had when he talked about eight tracks. It was a painstaking process, but that gave it an air of romance. Creating a podcast and a playlist just doesn’t say, “I love you,” in quite the same way, but technology moves ahead and some technologies must be left behind.
Of course, schools have to purchase the technologies that they can afford when they have the money and often times these technologies are held onto by school systems long after they are obsolete because schools can’t afford to get rid of every outdated technology they have without a steady influx of technologies to replace them. That is why I found myself looking at an outdated cassette recorder on the back shelf of our in school technology graveyard. We now have access to technologies that can do the same thing, but we aren’t quite ready to give up what we had.
In a world of iPods, cell phones, digital recorders, and pocket camcorders a simple cassette recorder doesn’t make sense. The fact that my iPod can store the equivalent of 120,000+ audiocassettes in a space that is roughly equivalent and has more uses makes the decline of audiocassette recorders easy to understand. Even a compact disk, another technology becoming outdated, has more versatility and more application than a simple audiocassette.
By using an audio recorder like GarageBand or an audio library tool like iTunes a user is able to create their own recordings or use another’s to make playlists and populate an iPod, the technology that signaled the final deathblow to the magnetic audiocassette. The ubiquitous adoption of MP3 players and the sheer variety of MP3 players has truly transformed the market. There has even been a move towards using audio programs on phones to take the place of the type of recorder I found in the cupboard at my school. The most recent iPod touch offers not only the capability to manage playlists, record audio, and share these creations, it also offers the ability to take photos and high definition movies. In a world like this, the good old-fashioned mixed tapes I made as a young man are a thing of the past, at least in my world.
As Thornburg points out, there is more than one definition of “emerging” that can be used when talking about technology (Laureate, 2009). In some part of the world, the technology of the mixed tapes I remember may just be emerging because it has not inundated the market and the technology that replaced it, the iPod, may not be feasible. It all depends on the perception of the market and the population that is interacting with the technology.
In my classrooms, I have tried to bring in iPods and podcasting as a way to engage my students. Having those students interact with content on tapes would make them curious I am sure as some of them have never actually seen an audiocassette; it wouldn’t make much sense though. Instead, I am trying to bring in the kinds of programs that allow them to interact with content and allow them to record with the technologies that are relevant today. When it is all said and done, maybe making a playlist or a podcast is still a romantic thing to do because the intention is the same. Regardless, I have never looked at my iPod with the same kind of smile that the audiocassette recorder brought out.
References
Of course, schools have to purchase the technologies that they can afford when they have the money and often times these technologies are held onto by school systems long after they are obsolete because schools can’t afford to get rid of every outdated technology they have without a steady influx of technologies to replace them. That is why I found myself looking at an outdated cassette recorder on the back shelf of our in school technology graveyard. We now have access to technologies that can do the same thing, but we aren’t quite ready to give up what we had.
In a world of iPods, cell phones, digital recorders, and pocket camcorders a simple cassette recorder doesn’t make sense. The fact that my iPod can store the equivalent of 120,000+ audiocassettes in a space that is roughly equivalent and has more uses makes the decline of audiocassette recorders easy to understand. Even a compact disk, another technology becoming outdated, has more versatility and more application than a simple audiocassette.
By using an audio recorder like GarageBand or an audio library tool like iTunes a user is able to create their own recordings or use another’s to make playlists and populate an iPod, the technology that signaled the final deathblow to the magnetic audiocassette. The ubiquitous adoption of MP3 players and the sheer variety of MP3 players has truly transformed the market. There has even been a move towards using audio programs on phones to take the place of the type of recorder I found in the cupboard at my school. The most recent iPod touch offers not only the capability to manage playlists, record audio, and share these creations, it also offers the ability to take photos and high definition movies. In a world like this, the good old-fashioned mixed tapes I made as a young man are a thing of the past, at least in my world.
As Thornburg points out, there is more than one definition of “emerging” that can be used when talking about technology (Laureate, 2009). In some part of the world, the technology of the mixed tapes I remember may just be emerging because it has not inundated the market and the technology that replaced it, the iPod, may not be feasible. It all depends on the perception of the market and the population that is interacting with the technology.
In my classrooms, I have tried to bring in iPods and podcasting as a way to engage my students. Having those students interact with content on tapes would make them curious I am sure as some of them have never actually seen an audiocassette; it wouldn’t make much sense though. Instead, I am trying to bring in the kinds of programs that allow them to interact with content and allow them to record with the technologies that are relevant today. When it is all said and done, maybe making a playlist or a podcast is still a romantic thing to do because the intention is the same. Regardless, I have never looked at my iPod with the same kind of smile that the audiocassette recorder brought out.
References
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). New and Emerging Technologies. Baltimore: Author.
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