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| Introduction |
| Suitability for secondary students |
| 'Good to go' podcasts |
| Drawbacks to some podcasts |
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| Possible assessment tasks |
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Podcast 23 looks at the use of a collection of radio dramas now referred to
as
X Minus One in
secondary classrooms. This podcast was written by MichaelS and was read by
Chantal with sound excerpts from the
X Minus One
series, uploaded to the LibSyn system on
25 April, 2009.
The
X Minus One radio
dramas followed an earlier Science Fiction series of on-air dramas called
Dimension X.
Over one hundred episodes of
X Minus One were
made between 1955 and 1958 and they are now available as podcasts from a
variety of sources, including from LibSyn, where this podcast originates.
The radio shows have been catalogued, uploaded to servers and all the right
meta-tags put in so that they can be pushed out to the user through iTunes
or other services, then played on
iPods,
little Creative Zen
players like mine, or from home computers.
The
X Minus One
podcasts are not alone as early science fiction radio dramas now available
by subscription online through iTunes and other podcatchers. There is the
British Science Fiction series with dozens of dramas in longer story arcs
and also the
Science Fiction Theatre.
This discussion covers only the
X Minus One
series even though the other two are great fun and valuable as SF resources
in their own right.
Suitability for secondary students
X Minus One seems
to suit teachers of secondary Science Fiction more readily, mostly because
the episodes are separate and self-contained and also because they are
shorter.
Good research from Charles Sturt University by Chan and
Lee in 2005, called ‘An mp3 a day keeps the worries away’ and many papers
since note that travel time can be used for listening to educational
podcasts, with students finding it useful to plug in earphones and click on
their mp3 players to listen when on the bus, exercising or travelling to
their campus.
The
X Minus One
podcasts are around thirty minutes long with introductions, some music and
even station idenitifiers and promos.
The thirty minute dramas were just right for me as I
cycled around the lake to my school. I would arrive for classes with my mind
still full of distant star systems, aliens, invasions and the problems of
colonising distant planets, not to mention the black swans with their
cygnets on the steel blue waters of the lake.
I figured that thirty minutes would be about the right
time for a bus trip in from the school hinterland and then a walk over the
ovals to the schools, so the timing for
X Minus One
seemed suitable. I also hoped that because so many of my students had mp3
players and earphones plugged in, they could listen to podcasts for their
studies but would be assumed to be listening to music, escaping vilification
from peers.
Using the X Minus
One podcasts within a teaching unit of science fiction falls into the
‘Good to go’ podcast format as described by Kathleen P King and Mark Gura in
their fine text Podcasting for
Teachers, produced by Information Age Publishing in 2007.
King and Gura note that ‘Good to go’ podcasts simply
require listeners to access them for use. The podcasts become instructional
resources “often providing wonderful content not available through other
means.” They add, “Bringing authentic materials into the learning experience
has long been a favoured practice of teachers and podcasting is one way that
technology makes this previously difficult to achieve practice infinitely
easier.”
A very strong reason for using the
X Minus One
podcasts within a Science Fiction study is found in the stories themselves.
Many of the short dramas were adaptations of published science fiction
stories, including several by
Ray Bradbury,
Philip K Dick,
Robert A Heinlein
and Isaac Asimov. As
it would be next to impossible to teach a science fiction course without
using stories by one or more of these writers, the radio adaptations were
very handy, especially for students reluctant to read. As I used my own
podcasts for my teaching, the
X Minus One
podcasts were a natural addition or ‘scaffolding’, to support the students
in their studies. The mySF Project has a thematic approach to the studies
and the large number of podcasts from
X Minus One made
it simple to aim specific podcasts to suit the five different theme areas.
Before discussing and advocating the use of a few of the
X Minus One
podcasts I have to mention that there can be drawbacks to using these radio
productions. A major drawback is the adaptation of some famous and important
short stories into radio dramas. Sometimes the story is butchered. Sometimes
the strangeness, the alterity of the narrative is lost entirely when the
adaptation looks for laughs rather than simply dramatising the story.
Some of the readings of the parts can be painful with
changes to the original author’s work so pronounced that the radio drama can
seem more of a lampoon of science fiction than a careful treatment.
The radio dramas are introduced and as with most science
fiction productions, the sound track can include a quavering and distracting
theremin, or a studio
orchestra that seems to have taken up flugelhorns to drone Wagnerian themes
behind an arrival on a threatening planet or to accompany disaster in space.
Many students may, like this listener, find these accompaniments intrusive
and annoying.
On the other hand, the
X Minus One
podcasts with their famous, iconic introductions will be unusual for
students. While they are dated, they have definite enthusiasm and freshness.
The stories can be so powerful that the voices and sound effects do not seem
corny. They can communicate the rise of science fiction into popular culture
more effectively than any article or discussion. There will certainly be
some students who will download and listen to more than the required texts
and there will be several others who will want to create their own 50s style
SciFi audio drama. More on this, later.
Now, on to some recommended podcasts for students in
middle and upper middle secondary school.
And the Moon be Still as Bright
The first is probably the most famous, ‘And the Moon be
Still as Bright’ written by
Ray Bradbury. Much
has been written about this story and others in the series of Martian tales
by Bradbury. The story of the arrival of an Earth expedition on Mars is
complex and it is well suited to modern audiences, especially Australian
audiences, as it explores the treatment of indigenous cultures by invaders.
A sensitive soul amongst the invaders sides with the newly deceased Martian
culture, kills one of his own and then attempts to defend the much older
culture against human barbarians by killing all comers. The reactions of the
Captain, the crew of the Earth rocket and the florid descriptions of the
ancient and aerie cities singing in the wind make the narrative worthy of
consideration and discussion, especially set against the backdrop of the
European invasion of Australia and early treatments of Aborigines.
Bradbury’s story was a pilot for the series and it stills works well, also
introducing a splash of poetry into the obvious analogy with the American
experience with their indigenous cultures.
As a companion piece to this podcast is ‘The Martian
Death March’ with direct parallels to the Western set in space. This is
another Ray Bradbury
story but it has an even stronger polemic bent as Mars has been colonised
and the spidery Martian survivors locked up in settlements. Treatment of the
indigenous Martians is clearly linked to concentration camps and
reservations but one Martian, supported by a few Earthers, tries to walk
free across the Martian desert and into the allegorical hills. The story is
distinctly Biblical but again fits easily into Australian treatment of
indigenous cultures, refugees and its intended target of land-grabbing
Westerners slaughtering native Americans. As with the first podcast
recommended, this would be a fine opportunity to discuss how Science Fiction
can be used for political and social critiques, extending into the Bush and
Howard clamp-downs after the start of the War against Terror.
The third podcast recommended fits easily into the Time
Travel sub-genre of stories so popular in the 1950s. This is ‘A Gun for
Dinosaur’ adapted from an
L Sprague de Camp
story. The mySF Project
covers time travel in the
Fate and Predestination theme area and this story is a great exemplar.
It is simple and obvious and again criticises modern culture’s arrogance in
assuming dominance over nature itself, when it is the nature of humans that
is the real problem. It is well suited to students who may have trouble with
the more laboured and self-conscious time travel narratives such as
Heinlein’s series found in the mySF Project.
A story by
Robert Bloch,
‘Almost Human’ is recommended next and it fits directly into the
Ghost in the Shell theme area of the mySF Project. With a strange cinema
noir feel, a robot is controlled by a gangster who teaches the mighty
machine evil. As is always expected, the gangster is himself a victim of the
robot, after it learns a little about love and wants the gangster’s woman
for itself. With direct reference to the Frankenstein Complex but with a
neat and unique gangster overlay, this simple story may support less
confident students studying the sub-genre of artificial intelligence.
Regardless of a heavy dose of sexism and some tenuous
science, the podcast adapted from
Tom Godwin’s ‘The Cold
Equation’ is recommended. This podcast relates to visions of the future with
travel between planets possible, so it fits into the
Shape of Things to Come theme area.
In this story a young woman stows away on a rocketship to
meet up with her new husband, serving on a mining planet. Unfortunately, the
rocketship is on an emergency run with vaccine for a terrible plague and the
Cold Equation is used because there is not enough fuel for the young woman
to complete her journey. She must be thrown off the ship or walk out the
airlock into space, or the vaccine will not be delivered and thousands will
die. This is a useful story for looking at depictions of travel in space
from a 1950s perspective as well as for discussions of the role of women in
SciFi narratives, especially as the stowaway is so obviously silly, young
and beautiful.
With more humour and a deft touch for irony, the
Clifford Simak
story ‘Drop Dead’ is recommended in its podcast form. A space exploration
team arrive on a wonderful planet but are amazed that there is only one
species on the whole place. The creature (not an animal or any other
distinct family of creature but a hybrid of many) wants to be eaten and by
the end of the short story it is clear that its successful survival
mechanism is simply to be consumed. The crew of the starship eat the
creatures and become them. The sole survivor must choose the bucolic life of
the creature on the gentle and lovely planet, or die of starvation as a lone
human. It is an interesting story with no subtleties and traps and it will
be useful for any discussion of humour in Science Fiction as well as the
more heady discussions of Darwinian evolution found in many SciFi
narratives.
One of
Isaac Asimov’s most
famous short stories, ‘Nightfall’, has also been adapted for
X Minus One. This
podcast would be a handy accompaniment to a discussion of SciFi as the great
‘what if’ scenario, or to run with the entertaining movie
Pitch Black.
The story shows Asimov’s interest in cycles of history
and the thin line between scientific enlightenment and barbarism. It is set
on a planet that has night only once every 2,500 years and when it comes,
all Hell breaks lose. It would be well situated in the
Shape of Things to Come theme area, as part of a study of Asimov’s
Foundation series, or just to
examine one careful and thoughtful example of a stunning ‘what if’ narrative
that helped make SF so popular.
While several other podcasts can be recommended, I will
end with another Ray
Bradbury adaptation, in this case ‘Zero Hour’ where two story ideas were
presented back to back, including the eerie and tantalising ‘Invasion’ story
of a world-wide children’s game. The second story links to Phillip K Dicks
interest in automata with annoying personalities, seen in a smart house that
has survived a nuclear war while its owners’ shadows are printed on its
outside wall. Both stories are heady, lyrical and done superbly by the
X Minus One team – certain to
snare young readers into reading or listening to more.
Many of the writers for
X Minus One found
a large audience through the radio show, consolidating their popularity from
magazines like Astounding and
Galaxy. While some productions
hurt good stories, a few others were silly and not really within Science
Fiction but instead utilised a specialised, wise-cracking fantasy mode.
Nevertheless, some X Minus One
productions were so effective that they set a very high standard for later
radio drama, as seen best in the double from Ray Bradbury produced as ‘Zero
Hour’.
In these podcasts and their web pages in the mySF Project
no worksheets are offered, attempting to stay within fuzzy and open
Constructivist pedagogies. For the
X Minus One
podcasts assessment tasks leap out including comparisons between the
original stories and their adaptations for radio with its wider audience,
and the need to please radio sponsors.
Other straight-forward tasks include making two dozen of
the podcasts available to the students on their intranets and asking them to
work in teams to report on three of their favourites with links to the
themes explored and their studies.
Some student SciFi enthusiasts might tackle the most
famous of the podcasts, such as those recommended here and then research
authors and their other writings for a presentation.
Most excitingly, teams of students might create their own
SciFi podcasts in this remarkable 1950s style and these students could be
nudged into focusing on attitudes to gender, race, class and relationships
to technology in these creations. They can present their podcasts to the
rest of the class, a wider school audience, or uploaded back into iTunes for
the world audience, given appropriate safeguards – and appropriate time.
Chan, A. & Lee, J. (2005). 'An mp3 a day keeps the worries away: exploring the use of podcasting to address preconceptions and alleviate pre-class anxiety amongst undergraduate information technology students'. In: Dirk HR Spennemann & Leslie Burr (eds), Good Practice in Practice, Procedings of the Student Experience Conference 5-7th September 2005. Wagga Wagga, NSW: Charles Sturt University. Pp. 59—71.
King, KP & Gura, M. (2007) Podcasting for Teachers: Using a new Technology to Revolutionize Teaching and Learning. Information Age Publishing.
Lee, M. (2005, October). 'New tools for online collaboration: Blogs, wikis, RSS and podcasting'. Training and Development in Australia. Pp 17-20.
iTunes Store for downloads. Complete X Minus One podcast list and subscription - http://www.apple.com/itunes/overview/?ref=http://itunes.com. Accessed 25 April, 2009.
Jerry Haendiges Vintage Radio Logs. X Minus One names, links, summaries and brief notes - http://www.otrsite.com/logs/logx1001.htm Accessed 25 January, 2009.
Partial
Ottolejeune.com list of X Minus One podcasts with comments and links - http://ottolejeune.com/index.php/downloads/P120/ Accessed 25 January, 2009.
ends
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