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11th April 2008

Podcast244: Stories of Life on the High Seas by Jonathan Gayton in Perth, Australia to Oklahoma Over Skype

posted in digitalstorytelling, distributed-learning, economics, globalvoices, podcasts, travel |

This podcast is a recording of a wonderful videoconference conversation with Jonathan Gayton and Sue Waters from the Western Australia Maritime Training Centre in Perth, Australia, with our family in Edmond, Oklahoma. At the time of this videoconference, it was 8:30 pm on Thursday, April 10, 2008 in Oklahoma (US Central time.) It was 9:30 am on Friday, April 11, 2008 in Perth, Western Australia. Prior to the videoconference (see the shownotes for a link) our children brainstormed a list of questions they wanted to ask Jonathan, who they were told was an experienced sea captain who has logged many days of travel on the open ocean. Jonathan graciously framed the conversation by helping the children understand what it is like to be out on the open water, without any landmarks. He told us about modern day pirates, the ships he has sailed on, what it is like to work 96 hour days as a sailor, the things he finds most challenging as well as rewarding as a sailor, and whether he thinks the stars in the southern hemisphere or northern hemisphere are most beautiful. Jonathan also told an amazing story about thousands of dolphins he and his crew encountered on one of their sailing trips. This was a remarkable learning experience, and we all deeply appreciate both Jonathan and Sue taking their time to share these stories with us and with you via this recorded podcast. We did have some technical trouble with Skype and our Internet connections, and as a result just watched the 1-way video from Jonathan and Sue and only sent audio to them in Australia. This seemed to improve the quality and stablity of our Skype connection, which was made over the commodity Internet. (We didn’t use any private telecommunications lines to make this connection, we just used the commercial/consumer Internet.) It was amazing to talk to Jonathan and Sue who were literally on the other side of planet earth, 11 hours ahead of us in Oklahoma. Welcome to the 21st century, when learning experiences like this are not only possible but actually taking place from the homes of learners connected to the web and the edublogosphere! This conversation took place thanks to edublogging and twitter! :-)

 
icon for podpress  Podcast244: Stories of Life on the High Seas by Jonathan Gayton in Perth, Australia to Oklahoma Over Skype [40:35m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1615)

Show Notes:

  1. Western Australia Maritime Training Centre (Perth)
  2. Sue Waters’ blog: Mobile Technology in TAFE
  3. Sue Waters on Twitter
  4. Six Le Ponant pirates captured (11 April 2008)
  5. Malacca Strait Pirates - National Geographic Magazine (October 2007)
  6. Skype
  7. Learning Signs post of questions for Jonathan Gayton (0ur family learning blog)
  8. Call Recorder (the program I used to record this Skype videoconference)

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This entry was posted on Friday, April 11th, 2008 at 7:28 pm and is filed under digitalstorytelling, distributed-learning, economics, globalvoices, podcasts, travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

There is currently one response to “Podcast244: Stories of Life on the High Seas by Jonathan Gayton in Perth, Australia to Oklahoma Over Skype”

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  1. 1 On April 12th, 2008, Sue Waters said:

    Thanks Wesley for inviting us to talk to you and your family. I enjoyed listening to Jonathan myself and he explained it all so well; for some reason these seafarers are excellent story tellers. I’ve listened to so many wonderful stories of the sea for the different seafarers at my work.

    The best aspect that other staff listened into what we were doing, and it made them reflect on how they might use the technology with their learners.

    I’ve now onto the IT section at work to sort out my issues with Ustream which will keep them busy for awhile as it will involve two different parts of the IT help. The security section to work out why it’s being blocked (lets hope it’s not at a Department level as opposed to our College blocking). Plus the College has been testing wireless for quite a while but isn’t ready to go live. I need the wireless to get up and close to the fish.