A team from Apple came to Oxford last week to demonstrate the latest ideas about using podcasting to support university teaching and to demonstrate how it is generally a good idea to use Apple technology to do so.

It was an interesting event, as much for the way it was presented as for the content. The guys from Apple, neat and trim in their black outfits ( I did think the accompanying black Apple podium shroud was overdoing it though), presented twice: once to lecturers, once to technical people. They used very different discourses for the two groups, reflecting a perception of what each would understand, and each would approve. In fact, I don't think the distinction was necessary or appropriate: I suspect that anyone who went along would have been quite happy to learn some technological stuff, and also would not have been there if they weren't prepared to let the technology communicate its own potential.

Maybe we need to apply a bit of activity theory here, to understand how different interests within this particular workplace actually intersect, and to explore the possibility that we are working with some creaky old stereotypes about where the boundaries of one job end and the boundaries of another begins does not work in any setting probably, and certainly not in this one. The reality is, people use technology to enhance learning just as much because the technology might reveal something interesting about how to make that happen. But outsiders tend to scared of looking new and dumb when they come to Oxford, which might be true in some respects, but not when it comes to the way new technologies are dealt with here.

The people who did come along were there because they are willing to try new things out, I am sure. I thought podcasting might show me something new - might help me to perceive a different balance, a new configuration, between the things I arrange for and do with students, and the things they arrange and do for themselves. I still think it might, but that got lost yesterday, somewhere between the oversimplified stuff for lecturers and the grittier but unengaged (in terms of educational purposes) words for the techies. So we didn't quite get a key enticement of educational technology, which allows you to discover things about teaching and learning you hadn't thought of or considered possible before.

Anyway, I still look forward to being impressed by educational podcasting. The e-learning group are going to do a special project on this, as part of the course this year, and I'm quite excited about being enhanced.