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Digital Media

What Is Podcasting?

• Podcasting is a method of publishing audio and video files, graphics, and even PDFs to the internet and making them available for subscription-based download to a computer or MP3 player.
• Podcasts can be played on a variety of devices.
• Podcasts differ from other common multimedia formats in that they are released regularly – every day, week, or month.
• Subscription to the podcast through RSS feeds or XML allows users to automatically download new podcasts to their desktop.
• Podcasting allows for flexibility; an audience or learner can listen when, where and how they want.

UT Faculty, Instructors, and Staff have been creating and posting podcasts at Volcasting@UT, UT's academic and event podcasting directory. Not quite ready to dive in headfirst? Don’t worry: the ITC will provide the assistance and equipment to help get UT Faculty and Instructors started. Just request our free production services.

Why Use Podcasts?

• Share a one-time event with anyone who couldn't attend
• Archive your lectures online for student review
• Create reusable tutorials for lab work or other common processes
• Use video or audio to demonstrate difficult concepts
• Capture travel experiences for educational use
• "Push" your course materials and announcements to your students' desktops autmomatically
• Share research findings with colleagues and peer institutions
• Simplify your students' multimedia projects

Audio, Enhanced, or Video?

An audio podcast is an audio-only mp3 file. An enhanced podcast includes still images along with the audio. A video podcast many contain both audio and video.

Which one will work for you?

If you want to record lectures, consider audio. At least one prominent study shows that, while students expected to benefit most from lectures recorded to video, they found in practice that audio files were more convenient, less distracting, and equally informative.

Enhanced and video podcasts are ideal for creating reusable demonstrations; best practices for using a microscope, for instance, or how to recognize common diseases in a horse. They are also excellent mediums for capturing travel, interviews, or unusual experiences. An instructor may document her trip to Brazil for classroom or research use, or even ask her students to create multimedia "tours" of a local point of interest. In the end, the best format is the one that is most effective in highlighting your material.

Learn More About Podcasting

Here are a few links to pique your interest in podcasting:

NPR podcasts
http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast/podcast_directory.php

There’s Something in the Air: Podcasting in Education
http://connect.educause.edu/Library/EDUCAUSE+Review/TheresSomethingintheAirPo/40587

Is podcasting right for you?
http://www.elabs2.com/functions/message_view.html?mid=31190&mlid
=73&siteid=15988&uid=162650877b

Podcasting in Education
http://jdfrey.wordpress.com/podcasting-in-education/

Now that you've seen a little bit of what's out there, learn more about iTunes or handheld audio recorders or get started on building a podcast of your own by going to the audio, enhanced, or video tutorials for Mac, or the audio, enhanced, or video tutorials for PC.