Internet Radio Dreams

This morning I’m dreaming of Internet Radio: My OWN Internet radio station patterned after the amazing example of ds106 Radio. Let me explain.

In December 2012, I published the 3 minute photo story, “Live Internet Radio Broadcasting from a Bus.” In it, I shared “a story about webcasting a live radio show from a bus in Canada in August 2012 following Unplugd 2012.”

UnPlug’d 2012 was an incredible experience for me, partially documented in this Flickr album as well this 20 minute podcast from Northern Edge Algonquin. As a teacher and a learner, I have been transformed by many people and experiences, but perhaps none were as powerful as the free K-12 Online Conference, which I helped organize from 2006 to 2017. In those early, “heady days’ of the Internet and the “read-write web,” I connected with hundreds of other educators from around the world who were exploring ways we could learn together with the amazing tools and websites borne from fiber optic communication connections, mobile computing devices and algorithms. Today in 2024, these tools and digital highways are more powerful than ever, yet these potentials for interactive learning remain largely unexplored for many teachers and students in our schools.

One of the most powerful things I learned as a result of these #k12online powered connections was that I LOVE “digital storytelling!” I’ll never forget hearing David Jakes share a presentation about digital storytelling an an Austin “TechForum” back in 2007. I was fortunate to continue learning from David and being inspired by him both in person and virtually in the ensuing years. Alan Levine, Joe Lambert, Amy Burvall, and Dean Shareski are others who have not only sparked my own passion for digital storytelling, but also modeled for me and encouraged me to become a generous online sharer of ideas and resources.

Since I started my YouTube channel and published my first video in October 2006 (“How to create a Skypecast”) I’ve published 1338 videos in all, of which 1216 are public and 122 are private. That’s a LOT of video content!

As I’ve been playing extensively with generative artificial intelligence / AI tools over the past year, I’ve wondered how some of the 5,877 blog posts shared on “Moving at the Speed of Creativity,” audio podcasts I’ve recorded and shared over the years, and videos I’ve published could be summarized, synthesized, and/or “reborn digitally” to both share “old ideas” as well as inspire new ones. After the tragic death of my friend, colleague, and mentor Bob Sprankle in 2015, I started the website BobTaughtMe.com, which I still maintain. Before his death, Bob shared with me “the keys” to several of his websites and podcasts which he published with his students and colleagues, and there are TONS of amazing as well as inspiring moments in those paragraphs and audio waveforms which I’d both love to experience again myself, AND share with a new audience that may have never heard of Bob Sprankle and his work in education and educational technology before.

Now that it’s possible to create a subscribable podcast using YouTube and a YouTube playlist, I’ve wondered about re-publishing Bob’s audio podcasts on YouTube and bringing those inspiring audio creations to a new generation of educators and learners.

I also recently updated my own “Follow Jesus Curriculum” website, which includes archived adult Sunday School classes (with many recorded video lessons) from 2019 through 2022. These are already shared as YouTube playlists which I now “feature” on my own YouTube homepage, for “Finding Jesus in Media” and “Jesus and Science: Curiosity and Questions.”

Here’s my big thought, which is essentially a “slow hunch:” I’d like to use the ds106 radio model and recommended open source technologies to create my own “Moving at the Speed of Creativity” Internet radio station. Some of the ds106 radio backstory links are broken and not backed up by the Internet Archive’s WayBack Machine, but I did find this post by Ryan Brazell from 2014, “Creating Radio in the Language Classroom,” as well as Alan Levine’s 2014 blog post, “World Radio Day: ds106 Radio Magic.” The Google Doc “How to….ds106 radio, Alan’s July 2013 post, “It’s On Us to Manage ds106 Radio,” and the 2011 NetworkEffects post by Grant Potter, “Distributed, freeform, collective webradio” all contain a wealth of links and instructions which can potentially animate this idea and “slow hunch” of mine.

“Speed of Creativity Radio” is not at the top of my priority list, but it’s on the list.

Powered by connected digital learning tools, it’s amazing what’s possible.

If you enjoyed this post and found it useful, subscribe to Wes’ free newsletter. Check out Wes’ video tutorial library, “Playing with Media.” Information about more ways to learn with Dr. Wesley Fryer are available on wesfryer.com/after.