When geography meets podcast: using sounds to promote geographical thinking and sense of place.
Silvia STOCCO, Università degli Studi di Padova, Italy
Lorena ROCCA, Università degli Studi di Padova, Italy
Geography is studied mainly through visual activities despite literature has shown that multisensory experiences facilitate learning. However, geographical investigation can go beyond closed codes involving a polysemy of languages including sounds and linguistic dimension. Since the studies on the soundscape, sound has taken on importance among geographers who have turned their attention to the relationship between spaces, landscapes, places and sounds, with focus on the affective and emotional impacts (Paiva & Brito-Henriques, 2019). Moreover, auditory methodologies are tested in geographical research and to highlight the components that contribute to the creation of place (Kinkaid, Emard, & Senanayake, 2020). Considering the narrative, orality has always been a way for individuals to interpret reality in which humans attribute meaning to experiences and places starting from their social and cultural conditions (Mclennen, 2016).
In the light of this, the proposal aims at exploring the potentialities of podcasting in education to develop geographical thinking when researching and communicating places, but also promoting participation and attachment of local people to their territories. Considering student learning, podcasting can be effective for provoking reflective thought, promoting collaborative learning and student knowledge creation and meeting different learning styles (Ng’ambi & Lombe 2012). The strength of podcasting in narrating places brings to build an oral culture that connect authors and listeners. We want to emphasize the potentiality of podcasting in favoring new participatory practices for studying and researching territories. It can foster a dialogue among the actors that live there and favor a placemaking that sensitizes communities to the cultural and symbolic significance of places (Gruenewald, 2003). Podcast could represent an opportunity to exercise divergent thinking and new perspectives for territorial analysis even in educational contexts.
Mots clés : podcast|geographical narratives |sense of place |geographical thinking |geography education
A105004SS