Resources

Podcasting on the Rise

/ Cole Camplese / 3 Comments

Now that the Turkey Coma has worn off, I am back to reading a little bit. In my feeds this morning is a pointer to a new podcasting report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project. Instead of pulling it apart for you here, I’ll link to it and quote the research brief’s abstract …

Some 12% of internet users say they have downloaded a podcast so they can listen to it or view it at a later time. However, few internet users are downloading podcasts with great frequency; just 1% report downloading a podcast on a typical day.

Even though 12% seems low, let’s not forget that it was somewhere around 7% last year. As I am a part of the 12% I think it is a good thing as more and more good content hits the scene. One thing I am curious about is if I am in the 1% or not … I don’t listen to podcasts everyday, but my iTunes Podcast client certainly does. I wonder what that really means. I didn’t see that question answered in the report.

On top of it all, the short report wraps up with a discussion of iPod or other MP3 ownership …

While an iPod or MP3 player is not necessary to listen to or view podcasts, the proliferation of mobile media gadgets has helped fuel the demand for digital content that can be both time-shifted and place-shifted for listening and viewing on-the-go. According to our February-April 2006 survey, 20% of American adults and 26% of internet users report ownership of an iPod or MP3 player. Young adults, those with broadband access and parents are considerably more likely to have an iPod or MP3 player.

That last little bit there suggests to me that we are on the verge of a “perfect podcasting” storm of sorts … with a huge percentage of our students showing up on campus with MP3 playing mobile devices the interest in ways to fill them will continue to rise. I don’t care if it podcasting lecture materials or not, the fact of the matter is that the mobile education market may be one filled with opportunity for growth. The questions I have are around the types of content that will be delivered. When will audio versions of textbooks in chapter versions become common? I am wondering why more foreign language courses aren’t taking advantage of the excellent podcasts that are freely available? I know there are other ways, but what are they and what will they mean to us? Now that the pieces are lining up I am excited to know many of us have built an infrastructure to support it. No idea what “it” will ultimately be, but it is exciting.

Controlling Time

/ Cole Camplese / Leave a comment

Now this is a very interesting little secret … Going through my feeds this morning and I ran into a pointer via Alan Levine to a feature of Odeo that I hadn’t seen before … the ability to link directly to a specific portion of an audio file. Think of those possibilities for faculty and students! If you need to focus attention on a specific portion of an audio clip now you can do it.

I took a podcast from the Podcasts at Penn State site and simply linked it into my Odeo account (I didn’t upload it, I just pointed the player at the original file), published it as an Odeo podcast, grabbed the URL, and added the necessary components to tell the player where to being and end. The resulting Odeo link looks like this (with the stuff needed to play the quotes in bold):

http://odeo.com/audio/1583023/play/quote/4:10/4:50

Drupal … All Over the Place

/ Cole Camplese / 4 Comments

We use Drupal for a lot of stuff in our group at PSU. From our Liquid ANGEL project to Podcasts at Penn State, Drupal is being put through the paces all the time. I have friends who have gone to Drupal for their blogging platform and more and more people I know are getting into the act. We used Drupal a couple of years ago when we did blogging for the Governor’s School, the blogs@si project, and IST2U.

That’s a long intro paragraph just to point to the fact that Drupal is getting a whole new installation process with some nice features — the coolest one the ability to easily create custom distributions. At any rate, Drupal is getting better (and easier).