Podcasting in e-learning part-1

Part 1: Introduction and overview

Web 2.0 Podcasting is part of a set of technologies that make the Web a 2-way medium. These are often called Web 2.0 (web two point oh)

Web 2.0 e.g. Weblogs, Wikis, commenting, conversations, social bookmarking Web 2.0 is about collaboration and sharing online

Web 2.0 You may have seen Google Maps, another popular Web 2.0 technology

Or perhaps Flickr see my photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/dkeats

Social bookmarking on sites such as Del.icio.us is another Web 2.0 phenomenon

Some of the Web2.0 memes Tim O'Reilly created a Meme map for Web 2.0. Scan it to get a sense of where podcasting fits

Podcast : An online radio program that you can listen to online or download onto a mobile device and listen to offline MP3 (ogg vorbis, video)

Podcasts can also be done with video, in which case the are sometimes called vodcasts , a silly term. I will stick with podcast to cover both audio and video. In this seminar, though, we will focus only on audio . Podcasts can also be done with video!

Dave Winer and Adam Curry meet in New York City 2000 MP3 players and weblogs reach critical mass 2004 iPodder application created Hundreds of thousands of podcasts online 2006 Your first podcast Podcasting added to KEWL.Nextgen 2005 History 2007 Podcasts have exploded only very recently

Syndication : making Web feeds available from a site in order to provide other people an updated list of content (for example latest forum postings, news, blog, podcast, etc.) Normal webpages are pull technology; podcasts are push technology made possible through syndication

Syndication

Information from a website is made available in XML form (feed), including a link for more information

Two common formats, RSS and Atom

Podcasting wraps a sound file in an XML feed, so it can be accessed using Podcast and other feed readers

Downloaded asynchronously in the background when your computer and network are idle

if you schedule your feeds

Podcast sites may also provide online readers (e.g. KEWL.NextGen, Yahoo)

RSS and Podcast Syndication

RSS Feed from KEWL.NextGen This is what an RSS feed looks like. You never need to see this, but can be useful to know what is under the hood!

Play Podcast in the page In KEWL and other KINKY based applications, the podcast can also be played in a web browser

Popup Podcast player link The link allows the file to be opened in a full online MP3 player.

Podcast player in KEWL.NextGen The built in MP3 (podcast) player.

What are podcasts used for?

Personal expression

Radio station

Interactive user radio

Marketing

Informal knowledge and information sharing

Education

Finding podcasts http://podcasts.yahoo.com There are a number of sites that aggregate podcasts, and make them easier to find.

Finding podcasts Podcasts on interesting topics!

Finding podcasts http://recap.ltd.uk Educational podcasts abound.

Software for collecting podcasts

Numerous podcast RSS receivers for all platforms

a common cross platform tool (still known as iPodder on GNU/Linux)

Collects feeds, grabs selected files, downloads them, and opens in MP3 player

Can work in the background

End for this section Derek Keats [email_address] http://ics.uwc.ac.za http://avoir.uwc.ac.za http://elearn.uwc.ac.za Visit the digital freedom exposition at http://digitalfreedom.uwc.ac.za/ Come join us for the Expo on April 19-20, 2007 at UWC. See part 2 for more on podcasting in e-learning