Episode 57 Preview | SCRIPT

Episode 57 Introduction

TAPP Radio Preview TRANSCRIPT

Episode 57 Intro Transcript

TAPP Radio Preview

Kevin Patton: Hi there. This is Kevin Patton with a brief audio introduction to episode number 57 of The A&P Professor podcast, also known as TAPP Radio, an audio bar and grill for teachers of human anatomy and physiology. This is a preview episode, so let’s do some previewing. Then the full episode number 57, I’m going to briefly discuss the HAPS scholarships and awards, which are open for application right now. And I’ll go through them and what they’re for and what you get, and it’ll include some updates, some new things that we’ve never seen before in the HAPS scholarship and award program.

Kevin Patton: I’m also going to talk a little bit about the value of these preview episodes. Now you’re listening to a preview episode right now, and maybe you’ve done that before, and so you either already know or you going to know pretty soon that there’s more to it than just previewing the upcoming topics, that there is additional content in these preview episodes, so you really don’t want to miss them. Another thing I’m going to talk about just very briefly is my Nuzzel newsletter and why you should subscribe to it. And the featured topics are, well there are two featured topics, one is three warnings that I usually put into my A&P syllabus, and I’m going to go through them, what they are and why I put them in there. And then I’m also going to have a segment on a separate little bit of safety advice that I always give my students and how I handle that both in and out of the syllabus. So those are the upcoming topics for full episode number 57.

Kevin Patton: I want to spend a few minutes talking about something that I have not mentioned on this podcast in a long, long time, and that is the free app that is available for your mobile device that is a really convenient and easy way to keep up with this podcast. And there are different versions of the app available. There is an Apple version, an Android version, there’s even a special version for Kindle Fire, which is sort of based on Android, but it has its own version. And all of these are free. You just go to your device’s app store and search for The A&P Professor. And that search, there or anywhere you’re searching for The A&P Professor, it always works best if you use the ampersand symbol instead of spelling out the word and, so A&P would be A ampersand P when you’re searching for it. So you just search for that and it should come up in your device’s app store and it won’t cost you any money and you just install the free app and you’re good to go.

Kevin Patton: A little icon will show up on your homepage or wherever it shows up on your particular device. And I also have links to those apps in the show notes and episode page. And I don’t know if you’ve looked at it before, but if you haven’t, I want to mention that it does have a number of very useful features and characteristics. One is that it allows for continuous playback of an episode, which makes sense, right? That seems to be sort of basic functionality, but there’s also the ability to automatically download episodes if you want to do that. Now, the default is that it won’t download it until you start listening to it. That’s how podcasts usually work, is it’s sometimes called an incremental download, where it’ll take a moment to begin downloading and then start playing. And as it’s playing that first part, it’ll start downloading the rest of that episode in the background and you won’t even know it.

Kevin Patton: And then it usually goes away once you shut it off. The only way it usually stays on your device is if you specifically tell your podcast listening program to download it to your device, so it’s not going to use up space unless you want it downloaded. For example, if you want to load them up for a road trip, not knowing really where that road trip is going to take you in terms of accessibility to a network that’s going to allow you to keep listening uninterrupted. But you can set this app, which I sometimes call the TAPP app. Remember TAPP, T-A-P-P stands for The A&P Professor. So in the TAPP app, you can set it to automatically download them rather than just wait for you to click on it and start downloading it at the time, if that’s what you want to do. It also has features allow you to skip ahead and you can adjust how far it skips ahead or or skip behind too. It can quickly skip back 10 seconds or 30 seconds or a minute or whatever you set it for.

Kevin Patton: There’s also a repeat function so that it will automatically restart that episode at the end. It has a sleep timer so that it will automatically shut off your device at a certain time, assuming that you’ve fallen asleep by then, and that might be another great use of any of these episodes and that is a way to fall asleep. It’ll just lull you right to sleep, all that talk about mitochondria and cytoskeletons and things like that. And there’s also a speed settings, and a lot of people who listen to many podcasts, they do this. Now, I don’t like doing it myself. I’ve tried it and I’m not really a big fan of this, but you can set your podcast and to go at a faster speed, like 1.1 times the normal speed or 1.5 times the normal speed or twice the normal speed or three times the normal speed.

Kevin Patton: And that way you can listen to a lot more episodes in a shorter time. Or if you only have a short time and you want to listen a full episode, that can condense things down. I don’t like it because I don’t think I get as much out of it. And not only that, but I kind of miss the natural cadence of that person’s voice. And part of why I listened to podcast is because I want their voice, I want to feel like they’re talking to me. So that’s up to you to use it, but it does have those speed settings if you use them. It also has a handy car mode that you can use if you want to. And I use this actually quite a bit. I will turn it sideways, my Apple iPhone, I will turn it sideways, and then you get these big giant controls and I put that up on my dashboard while I’m driving and I’ll listen to podcast episodes.

Kevin Patton: And then if I need to pause it or skip ahead or whatever or stop it for the moment, then I can do that very easily without having to squint and focus on the screen and try to figure out what to press and where to press because if I do that, I’m going to be running into a car in front of me. So I know it’s really a very handy way to do it when you’re riding in a car or riding your bike or even when you’re jogging or walking or something like that, I will often use the car mode.

Kevin Patton: And then, and this is something I really want to emphasize, there’s a lot of bonus content in the app that you won’t get in another podcast app or if you’re listening to the player on the website or in the newsletter or something like that. You’re going to get all of the content of each episode, certainly. But I often, or at least occasionally, do upload extra videos or photos or PDFs of handouts and so on that you can use in your teaching, and those are bonus content that goes only to the TAPP app, so you need the TAPP app to access those. So even if you listen in Apple podcasts or Google podcast or Overcast or something like that, you might want to get the TAPP app anyway so that you can access those extra bonus materials when you need to. And it’s free and you can’t always unload it from your device if you went to, so it might be worth trying.

Kevin Patton: All of that bonus content is stuff that is not immediately available to listeners that are not using the app. For example, in the previous two episodes I provided handouts. One is a list of A&P terms that are often misspelled. And just looking that over might be useful, but you might want to use it as a handy reference or even hand it out to students and say, “Look, here’s some dangers. You want to watch out for this. These are common mistakes.” The other one is a handy little guide to the main differences between US and non-US spellings in English. I know that you’re all kind of familiar with the general idea that words like color and flavor and things like that, and even things like esophagus and fetal and things like that are spelled differently between US and non-US English, but this handout kind of gives you a pattern for that and shows you what the patterns are and gives you examples of each.

Kevin Patton: So again, it’s something I think worth looking at for those of us that use terminology so much in our profession. For the upcoming full episode, I’m going to have additional handouts as bonuses in the TAPP app. You can always access these, including those from way past episodes, such as lists of literal translations of bone names, bone feature names, muscle names, and even a list of media sources for teaching A&P. And I’ll also put up photos like the one I have showing the demo I use for the fishbowl analogy of homeostasis. And I have videos like an abridged version of the concept list workshop that I gave at a HAPS conference not long ago, and I have a demo of how I sort exams and assignments for easy grading. You can just hit the PDF tab or the video tab or the audio tab to find whatever you’re looking for, whether it’s the regular episodes or bonus content. And you can also sort things within the app by what you’ve played already or what you haven’t played yet, so you can quickly get to those episodes that you haven’t heard yet.

Kevin Patton: Another thing about the TAPP app is that there’s built in mechanisms where you can easily share an episode by using Twitter or Facebook or email or instant messaging or whatever, and it’ll give you a direct episode link that will put it right into your Twitter account, assuming you’re logged into your Twitter account, easy sharing directly from the app, if you want to share your favorite episode or segment, or just say, “Can you believe he said that?” And another thing that you can do is you can keep your favorites in a list, and you can keep downloaded episodes in a list so you can quickly get to them when you’re offline. There’s all kinds of social media integrations, links, commenting, voicemail. So all those times when I ask you to call in, you can just click the little button and it’ll dial the podcast hotline or it’ll email the podcast email address or it’ll go to The A&P Professor Twitter account, and you can make a comment on the Twitter account or the Facebook page or whatever. So it’s a good way to communicate, not only with me but with other users in social media.

Kevin Patton: And another thing about this app that I really like is it’s a great way to share this podcast with people who don’t do podcasts. Now, yes, there are still people out there who kind of know what a podcast is and they’ve heard about podcasts, but if you ask them how would you access a podcast, they wouldn’t be able to tell you. For those people you might recommend, hey, you ought to listen to The A&P Professor podcast because you teach A&P, and I found it to be very helpful. Well, that might not go very far because they’re probably going to say, “Yeah, okay good idea,” and walk away thinking, how would I do that? And it just goes right out of their mind and they never come back and look at it because well, I mean, frankly we just don’t like to do extra work in something that we don’t think is going to be very useful to us and figuring out how to do a podcast.

Kevin Patton: Now you and I know how easy it is, but not everybody does. Well here’s an easy way. You just say it’s just an app. Just go to your device’s app store and look for The A&P Professor and download it. That’s all you’ve got to do. Now, lots and lots and lots of people know how to download an app. There aren’t very many people out there that would have no idea how to take that next step when you say, “Hey, there’s a free app. You’ve got to get it.” So that would be a good way to help share this podcast with other people who you think might get some benefit from it. I do want to just emphasize, when you’re sharing it or even just for your own use, if you don’t like the app or you’ve stopped using the app, you can always delete it and then go and get it back again later. You don’t have to repurchase it or anything because it’s free. So the TAPP app, available in your mobile device’s app store.

Kevin Patton: Guess what? This podcast was recently reviewed on another podcast, which focuses on the critical analysis and review of a variety of different podcasts. It’s called the Podcast Review Show, which I’m thinking it’s a great name for a podcast that reviews podcasts, right? You can get to it at podcastreviewshow.com, which is also linked in the show notes for this episode. Now, The podcast Review Show is hosted by Dave Jackson, who’s a long time and well regarded podcaster. In fact, he’s so well regarded that he was inducted into the podcasting hall of fame a couple of years ago. He runs the school of podcasting and has also actually been a classroom teacher himself. His cohost is Eric K. Johnson, and he’s also very experienced in both radio and podcasting, and like Dave Jackson, has been a mentor to some very successful podcasters. Now, what they did on their show with my podcast is that they analyzed it and then brought me onto one of their episodes to give me their feedback and review. For example, here’s a brief clip from their episode.

Dave Jackson: … is, you were just talking to your buddy. It’s like you went to a bar, it’s a place where you would see on TV where all the firemen hangout. It’s like you went to a bar for A&P professors, and you’re just hanging out. You’re like, wait. And so, I really just felt like you were sitting down like talking to your bestest… It’s almost like you’re in the teacher’s lounge. There’s a bunch of A&P folks, and you’re like, what about this, kind of thing. So I just thought that was a great clip.

Erik K Johnson: You do a nice job of that throughout the episode. It’s very conversational. You’re able to connect with your listener in a much more powerful way when you do it one on one, and you have that natural conversational style through this whole episode. Even later on when you start talking about the syllabus, it feels like I should have a class here because you’re talking to me about in and out the syllabus and going through it and things like that. So you do a nice job with that.

Dave Jackson: Well, the other thing about that is, because that was at the two minute mark, so right there I know if I’m an A&P teacher, this is for me. It’s kind of a thing where it’s like, if it was for students, you wouldn’t be saying that. So that was another kind of area, it’s like, okay, in case you haven’t figured it out yet, this is for teachers. And I was like, “Oh, that’s a really cool… ” Just, and again, it was this helpful kind of gesture and the way you did that. And Eric talked about, this was one of my favorite things where…

Kevin Patton: Now, Dave and Eric found things that they liked in the podcast and things they didn’t like. Just like when an administrator or student evaluates our class, except that these two guys actually drilled down pretty deep into the supporting tools and information. And unlike most students and at least a few administrators, they’ve done this themselves every day and know a lot about what the best practices are, things that have been proven to work well for them and for others. And I can tell you that hearing the good, the bad, the ugly has been a great experience for me and has already led to some changes to how I do things with my podcast. And you know what? I need more. So please, always feel free to call or write in and tell me what’s working for you, what’s not working for you, and to tell me what new ideas you have that might work as this podcast continues to evolve.

Kevin Patton: The free distribution of this podcast is sponsored by The Master of Science in Human Anatomy and Physiology Instruction, the HAPI degree. This is a program for folks who already have an advanced degree and want to be at the top of their game in teaching anatomy and physiology. Check out this online graduate program at nycc.edu/hapi that’s H-A-P-I, or click the link in the show notes or episode page. There’s a new cohort forming all the time, so best get on this soon.

Kevin Patton: It’s time for, Word Dissection. Instead of our usual format for word dissections, I’m going to revisit a look at syllabuses and some weirdness related to that word because I’m going to be discussing syllabuses and the upcoming full episode. And you just heard me say syllabuses, and you’re probably thinking to yourself, why do I even listen to this guy? He can’t even get the simplest terminology correct. Doesn’t he realize that the plural form of syllabus is syllabi? Well, it’s true that I often get things wrong, especially pronunciations of terms, an issue I’ve brought up before with y’alls. Wow. I just said y’alls. I picked that up when I briefly lived in Galveston and it hardly ever pops out anymore. But there you go, I can’t even get the proper incorrect form you all out there.

Kevin Patton: But getting back to syllabuses, I didn’t know until recently that in English, the correct plural form of syllabus is syllabuses and syllabi. Either one is correct. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard anyone actually say syllabuses except for me, and I usually only use that when I’m trying to make a point, like right now. And maybe before listening to this episode or the previous episode where I talked about the same thing, you hadn’t heard it either, or either.

Kevin Patton: It turns out that the English word syllabus was coined way back in 1650 from a modern Latin word that was itself formed sort of by mistake, by several misreadings and misinterpretations of some similar sounding Greek words, one of which was already a plural form of a word, meaning papyrus roll or scroll. So it looks like a plural Greek word was adopted into modern Latin as a singular noun. So we already have a really cloudy situation regarding pluralization, right? So once it appeared in Latin as a singular noun, it then took on a Latin plural form, syllabi. So it was plural, which then formed a singular Latin noun, which now needed a Latin plural form. Oh, man. This is hard to keep track of, isn’t it?

Kevin Patton: Remember we’re speaking English, not Latin. And while it’s true that in academia in general, and the life sciences in particular, we do like to use the Latin plural forms. When it comes right down to it, we’re still speaking English right? So it’s syllabi if you want to preserve the Latin flavor, and who doesn’t? But it’s also perfectly fine to use syllabuses as the plural form. Both are okay, really. Trust me. But hey, if you’re ever confronted with this choice in a game of Jeopardy, you’re on your own with the judges. Now, in the upcoming full episode, I’m going to be talking about helpful things we might want to consider for our syllabi or syllabuses, as you prefer.

Kevin Patton: This podcast is sponsored by HAPS, the Human Anatomy and Physiology Society, promoting excellence in the teaching of human anatomy and physiology for over 30 years. Go visit HAPS at theAPprofessor.org/haps, that’s H-A-P-S. There’s a new book club recommendation from The A&P Professor Book Club. This book is called Powerful Teaching: Unleash the Science of Learning. And it’s written by Pooja Agarwal and Patrice Bain, both of whom are very well known education and learning experts. And this recommendation comes from listener, Kim Terry, so I appreciate that. Kim said that she liked that it looks into how we learn and how we remember things and how we can help our students do it with quick and easy activities in our classes. As far as I’m concerned, quick and easy is always a good strategy, right? And this book, just flipping through it, I haven’t read it yet. I’ve had it for a little while. It came out not too long ago but I’ve had it for a little while, and I just haven’t gotten to it yet but I have flipped through it, so it’s on my list.

Kevin Patton: And I follow Pooja Agarwal’s adventures on her website, which is called retrievalpractice.org. And I’ve learned a lot from that and I really gained a lot more appreciation than I already had going into it for retrieval practice and for different strategies that are related to retrieval practice or can be used along with retrieval practice. And according to the publisher, this book has several objectives. One is to develop a deep understanding of powerful teaching strategies based on the science of learning, so this is all evidence-based stuff. Another objective is to gain insight from real world examples of how evidence based strategies are being implemented in a variety of academic settings. Another objective is to think critically about your current teaching practices from a research based perspective and also to develop tools to share the science of learning with students and parents, ensuring success inside and outside the classroom.

Kevin Patton: So the publishers claim that this book is an indispensable resource for educators who want to take their instruction to the next level. And if all they do is explain what were retrieval practice is, I think they could accomplish that goal. But of course, it goes way beyond that. So equipped with scientific knowledge and evidence-based tools, teachers can turn teaching into powerful teaching and unleash student learning in any kind of classroom.

Kevin Patton: And one caveat that I ought to mention is that a lot of folks talking about this book mention that it has a lot of applications in K to 12 classrooms. And I’ve seen and heard some higher education colleagues dismiss the idea of implementing K-12 strategies in college courses. Oh, poor dears. Don’t they realize that these principles operate in humans in general and not just kids? Well, I’m telling you, they do. And some of the best teaching advice and experience I’ve gotten has been in K-12 classrooms. As I tell my youngest son, try not to have rock brain. You’ll miss out on a lot if you do. So, once again, that Powerful Teaching, Unleash the Science of Learning by Pooja Agarwal and Patrice Bain.

Kevin Patton: A searchable transcript and a captioned audiogram of this preview episode are funded by AAA, the American Association for Anatomy at anatomy.org. This is Kevin Patton signing off for now, and reminding you to keep your questions and comments coming. Why not call the podcast hotline right now at 1-833-LION-DEN? That’s 1-833-546-6336. Or visit us at theAPprofessor.org. I’ll see you down the road.

Last updated: December 3, 2019 at 17:08 pm