How Will Podcasting Affect Higher
Education?
Prepared For: Professor Perry
Prepared by: Team New Tech
Introduction
Podcasting was introduced around the year 2000. By 2001 there was technology everywhere for podcasting. Today it is used everywhere, from business meetings to education to just entertaining purposes only. Podcasting is growing even more with every day that goes by. Podcasting got its name from the product by Apple called an ipod. This product is what started the technology for everyone to start to use podcasting.
What exactly is Podcasting? Well podcasting is downloading an audio file or video file to a portable player such as an ipod or laptop. Users get this audio or video from downloading it through a file in an .mp3 format or a video format. Then the person who downloaded the file from a website sends it to their portable player and can listen to it at anytime and as many times as they want. One article described pod casting as TIvo for internet audio because it can be replayed whenever the user would like to listen to it. (Podcasting news).
To get a pod cast the users have to subscribe to a RSS feed. This is so the user can receive new files. The pod cast can be sent to a cell phone as well. People use them as ring tones for example. It is limitless in what you can do with a pod cast.
So what does podcasting do? Well podcasting takes our technology to a new level. Instead of only hearing things once at a certain time people can now hear things at their convenience. It makes our lives a lot easier. Americans have the reputation of working all the time and not having time to do things. Well with podcasting no matter how busy someone maybe if there is something they have to hear they will be able to hear it whenever they want to. Many television networks are now starting to put their television programs on their websites so you can go to the site to watch whatever episode you have missed. Soon you will be able to put the episodes on your portable media player.
The History of Podcasting
In 2005, the New Oxford American Dictionary announced podcast as the word of the year. The New Oxford American choose as the definition, "a digital recording of a radio broadcast or similar program, made available on the internet for downloading to a personal audio player". While the New American Oxford did not recognize podcasting as a word until 2005 the term originated from the British journalist Ben Hammersley who made a synthesis of the words, "broadcasting" and “iPod”.
However, a podcast is not exclusive
to being played on Apple’s iPod as the
It has been suggested because podcasts are not exclusive to being played with the iPod, to refer to this medium as audioblogging or blogcasting. These terms have not adhered to the concept however, showing once again what is culturally popular being in disparity with what is factually accurate. Most podcasts were primarily audio content; now more casters are incorporating photos and video as well.
The current infatuation with podcasts arrives from the desire of people to lead an increasing individualistic life. In shifting across the radios airwaves the listener has been subject to the decisions of the broadcasting company’s as to the, what and when of their listening. With podcast, though the listener is allowed to step out side of time space constrains of broadcasting companies to listen to what their want when they desire to.
In September 2004 before podcasting rocketed to it’s current popularity an internet seer, Doc Searls of IT Garage in his observations made this prediction, “Podcasting will shift much of our time away from an old medium where we wait for what we might want to hear to a new medium where we choose what we want to hear, when we want to hear it, and how we want to give everybody else the option to listen to it.” As the internet has morphed into its current state, we can see that the on demand nature of podcasting is a natural progression in the organization of the world’s information to be readily available to our purposes.
Podcasting Technology
The capstone allurement of podcasting is for the listener is it not a one-time deal but based on the concept of a subscription to the podcast. The piece of technology, which is the cog to make all these wheels turn is the RSS feed. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, part of the success of podcasting being its simplicity. Utilizing an RSS feed having uploaded you podcast allows your listens to subscribe to you, thus when your listens connect to the internet the RSS feed automatically reaches out and snags your newest cast without the subscriber ever having to go to your web page. Just as newspapers delivered the days topics to our front door step, so podcasting for this age has come about to deliver fresh content for our daily endeavors, but now we choose who has the voice not a corporation.
Once the listener has subscribed to your RSS feed it uploads the file to their portable player such as an iPod. Once this happens, the listener is free to listen to your audio clip whenever they want. In addition, the listener will be able to stop, rewind, and listen to a certain part of the audio clip at their discretion.
Make the audio clip Put into
an .mp3 file
upload to portable player
Environmental Issues
Along with this phenomenon of podcasting comes the concern of environmental issues that may exist or develop in the future. When you think about environmental issue, one thing stands out and that is the issue dealing with the environment. With podcasting it is unlike anything that has been developed in along time, scientist and developers have yet to find any environmental issues or concerns dealing with the new phenomenon. But I would like to take a turn and discuss how podcasting could potential help the environment, since there are none that has been discovered thus far. With podcasting, there are several options that it could be used for, I would like to discuss, how to help or prevent environment issue. There are several ways, the self-guided walking tours, Training and story telling. The self-guided walking tours are the ability with podcasting to display informational content about the environment. The other would be training. Training can be heard and uploaded anywhere and could reach a large audience. The last story telling, through story telling of podcasting stories could be told about environmental issues that could eventually help and protect society.
Podcasting in Business
As
mentioned before podcasting is growing more and more and people are learning
how to take advantage of this technology by determining how it will grow their
business. Many companies are starting to
incorporate podcasting in the way they train their employees. One example of a company using this
technology to effectively teach its employees is Prentice Hall’s sales
organization. The vice president of
Prentice Hall stated “They’re (Prentice Hall
employees) more likely to learn from things that they find interesting and from
things that they find somewhat entertaining. Before we were communicating in
what I would call an information-heavy way. You know, here is all the
information. Just because you are a sales rep does not mean that you have to
plod through all this stuff and learn from it. With podcasting we’re acknowledging
that people learn best when they’re stimulated, when their minds are open to
learning and when the information is informative but also entertaining.”
(Kellye Whitney,
Companies are using podcasting in this way to teach because
their employees can listen to the audio whenever they want to. This helps because the employees will be a
lot more effective while being able to get their work done and learning at
their own pace and time. As in the above
example, Prentice Hall’s sales reps learn from this, which is great because
most sales people spend a lot of time on the road in their cars. The sales reps could listen to the podcast
while driving to their next appointment.(Kellye Whitney,
Podcasting in
Education
As in business, Educational institutes are beginning to use podcasting to educate their students. From the educase website, Gardner Campbell gives an example of a student waking up and getting podcasts from her upcoming classes for the day. In the article, it shows that the student wakes up and starts to listen to the podcasts she has subscribed. In the podcast there is a student explaining what is going to take place in class for the day and reviews what happened in the last class. The student is not able to hear all of the subscriptions so she synchronizes them to her iPod and heads off. She finds out that the other podcasts are others from her classes, one preparing her for a presentation she has to give later that day in which she will listen to again. Another one is a professor explaining what will be taken place in class and giving her a briefing on what she will learn.
Another great example for using podcasting in education would be for teachers to record their lectures. Students could go online to get these lectures and be able to listen to it at anytime. In addition, if a student did not understand a part of the lecture the student to go over that part of the audio as many times as they want on their own time. This would save a lot of time for the professors while helping the students gain the knowledge the professors are aiming for.
In my research I have found that one great way that podcasting is being used in education is in language classes. This is an extraordinary way to learn a new language. You can go over the material over and over as many times as you want whenever you want.
There are some negatives to using podcasting in the classroom. Although the students would be able to hear the lecture over again, they would not be able to see all the visuals the teacher uses. In addition, this could be very time consuming to have to listen to an hour and fifteen minute lecture all over again. The student could actually be losing valuable time in trying to listen to the same thing over again and not get the points that the professor is trying to give the classroom.
Using Podcasting in educational institutes there are certain worries about copyright laws. Usually if you are going to use some material that is copyrighted you have to ask permission to use that material. On the engage website, it shows you how to go about getting a podcast copyrighted in the case that you do not want other people gaining from your work. Although most people that make a podcast make them because they want people to hear what you have to say.
Recommendation
After seeing the leaps in which podcasting has increased in relevance and popularity I see this medium while not an essential, as useful tool in an increasing data cluttered time. People needing to exercise the decisiveness required of them in attaining the information core their purposes. For teachers I feel this could be rather effective for classes, which do not have the time to cover all the material as needed within the week. Teachers might also find this medium useful in providing supplemental lectures or tutorials for those who need them. Using this medium for additional instruction provides the student with the opportunity to gain the needed information without the intimidation of approaching an instructor, or embarrassment in acknowledging a lapse in their understanding.
. In addition, the technology of podcasting is
growing everyday as well as the people that are using podcasting. It is estimated that by 2010 the podcasting
audience will be five times bigger than it already is.(Mike Chapman, 3/2006)
That helps our argument out by showing that there will be more access to
podcasting therefore the teachers and students will be more likely to be able
to use this technology. It will benefit
everyone by being more time consuming and as said before able to be used and
the users convenience.
Works Cited
iPod media studio.
http://www.podcastingnews.com/articles/What_is_Podcasting.html
http://www.clomedia.com/content/templates/clo_article.asp?articleid=1306&zoneid=180, Kellye Whitney
http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/08/0027206
http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue10_9/crofts/
http://technology.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,1145689,00.html
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2005/jun/30podcast.html
http://www.emarketer.com/Reports/All/Podcasting_mar06.aspx?src=rts/All/Podcasting_mar06, Mike Chapman
http://educause.edu/apps/er/erm05/erm0561.asp?bhcp=1, Gardner Campbell, December 2005
http://engage.doit.wisc.edu/podcasting/resources/
Rincon, Ana. http://onlinebusiness.about.com/od/marketing/a/podcasting.htm
Hobson,Neville.2/14/2005.http://www.webpronews.com/insiderreports/marketinginsider/wpn-50-20050214SeriousPodcastingForBusiness.html
Post, Peter. http://www.boston.com/business/podcast/