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Podcasting is the creation and serial distribution of media through the Internet. Podcasts are created and disseminated on a regular basis by a podcaster. A subscriber can easily receive new episodes and episode information, and download, view, listen, and transfer the episodes to a variety of portable players.Podcast content can include audio, video, and image materials.[1] "Podcasting" refers to the action of recording and disseminating podcasts; the following article documents the various functions that podcasting can fulfill.

Public services

  • Unofficial audio tours of museums.[2]
  • Official cultural or historic audio tours of cities
  • A way for news organizations to distribute audio or video as an addition to their existing text (or mostly text) news products. For example, Wikinews began to podcast its News Briefs in 2005. Companies are also using podcasts as a way to distribute their multimedia news to journalists and consumers through companies like MultiVu. In 2006, the online magazine Slate began textcasting articles to their readers, by attaching a written article to a blank audio file and delivering the content to readers through their regular podcasting mechanism.[3]
  • Advocacy. The 5,500 locked out staff (editors, journalists, technicians, hosts, etc.) of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation were podcasting news and other programming during August and September 2005.
  • Youth media. Podcasting has become a way for youth media organizations, such as Youth Radio, to bring youth perspectives to a wider audience.
  • Public libraries can podcast local publications free of Copyright, offering spoken word alternatives to the visually impaired. Non-profit organizations podcast readings of short-format magazine articles for visually impaired readers.
  • Law enforcement. The Chicago Police Department has a free video podcast of its half-hour weekly news magazine called "CrimeWatch," which airs on local TV. It documents community policing (CAPS) success stories.
  • Educational Institutions use Podcast for self guided Campus Tour.

Education and academia

Podcasting in K-12 Education

K-12 schools have also begun adopting podcasting as an instructional tool.Podcasts are used for many educational purposes and list several advocates of podcasting who believe that it can offer unique educational benefits to learners.[4] The main advantage of podcasting is the simplicity that it offers to learners. Listeners are no longer constrained by time and space with regard to their learning activity.Podcasts give superior support to auditory learners who comprise 30% of all learners.[5] You do not need particularly expensive equipment nor sophisticated know-how to create your own podcast. Podcasting affords iPods and other mobile audio players a double life: a usefulness for both entertainment and education. Podcasts are created by students for projects or by instructors for instructional purposes.[6]

Curriculum Applications of Podcasts:

  • To develop reading, speaking, writing, and listening skills
  • To acquire information
  • To develop technology skills and applications
  • To learn interactive ways to communicate knowledge to real audiences
  • To develop positive academic self-concept
  • To develop sense of audience and purpose when reading, writing, and speaking
  • To develop a student ownership of language
  • To encourage active participation and learner-centered focus
  • To develop multicultural awareness[7]

Podcasts for Students

There are many uses for podcasting for the classroom, they can be used to convey instructional information from the teacher or trainer, motivational stories, and auditory case studies. Podcasts can also be used by the learners as artifacts and evidence of learning; for example, a student might prepare a brief podcast as a summary of a concept in lieu of writing an essay. Podcasts can also be used as a means of self-reflection on the learning processes or products.[8] During a review of literature that reports the use of audio podcasts in K-12 and higher education, it was founs that individuals (1) use existing podcasts and/or (2) create their own podcasts.[9]

Consuming Podcasts

Apple Incorporated introduced iTunes U, a nationwide expansion of a service that puts course lectures and other educational materials online and on-the-go via Apple's iTunes software. In 2006 there were over 400 podcasts from K-12 classes listed on iTunes and over 900 education-related podcasts listed on Yahoo. Apple Computer Inc. introduced "iTunes U," a nationwide expansion of a service that puts course lectures and other educational materials online and on-the-go via Apple's iTunes software. [10] Students reported that replaying podcasts facilitated the comprehension of complex concepts and increased understanding for non-native language learners.[11]

Creating Podcasts

The use of social technologies (blogs, wikis, RSS) allow students to shift from simply consuming media to actually creating it on their own.[12]Student-powered podcasting can promote several powerful ideas that students can use over a lifetime. These include hands-on and reflective approach to copyright and fair use in creating digital media. Podcasting becomes a tool for them to think about the balance of individual rights and community benefits. Students creating podcasts become active participants in culture and society. Podcasts helps students learn 21st century literacy skills. They can create original content, as they ethically and effectively collect and remix the work of others. Students can create audio dramas, news shows or audio tours. [13] Podcasting offers a very real means for encouraging students to ask real questions about their world, to follow the intuitions about the relationships between history, people and now to really think about things, rather than dates and facts.[14]Podcasting offers learners and teachers flexibility and learner control, opportunities for learner motivation, clarity of instruction, novelty of engagement, widening of ‘locations’ in which learning is situated – an expansion of the temporal and spatial, engagement with and collaboration around dialogue and opportunities for learners to get involved in construction of learning for others .[15]When creating podcasts, students learn to connect with the world around them both by developing relevant content and by learning to responsibly use content created by others.[16]

Podcasts for Teachers

Podcasting can be a tool for teachers or administrators to communicate curriculum, assignments and other information with parents and the community.[17]

Classroom Use level

Podcasts in Higher Level Education

  • Mobile Learning: Podcasting can be categorised as an m-learning strategy for teaching and learning. In 2004 Musselburgh Grammar School pioneered podcast lessons with foreign language audio revision and homework.[18] In the second half of 2005, a Communication Studies course at the University of Western Australia used student-created podcasts as the main assessment item.[19] In 2005 Students in the Write was created for second grade students at Morse Elementary School in Tarrytown, NY. By providing students with an authentic audience, teachers noticed significantly increased motivation to write. Students were also found to improve fluency and listening skills.[citation needed] On the 21st February 2006 Lance Anderson, Dr. Chris Smith (the Naked Scientist), Nigel Paice and Debbie McGowan took part in the first podcast forum at Cambridge University. The event was hosted by the Centre for Applied Research in Educational Technologies.[20][21]
  • Mobile Knowledge Transfer: Podcasting is also used as a further channel in Corporations to disseminate information and knowledge faster and easier. It can be seen as a further development of Rapid E-Learning as the content can be created fast and without much effort. Learners can learn in idle times which saves time and money for them and the organizations. If audiopodcasts are used they can be used during other activities like driving a car, or traveling by train/ bus. A target group often targeted is the salesforce, as they are highly mobile. There Podcasting can be used for sales enablement (see case study) with the goal of having the sales employee aware and knowledgeable on the companies products, processes, initiatives etc. An often used format is expert interviews with statements of experienced role models to bring across also informal/ tacit knowledge.
  • Language Learning: Podcasts can be used to both inside and outside the language learning classroom. Teachers can record and publish their daily lessons for students to download to their MP3 players for endless practice. There are also predesigned websites where native speakers publish stories and language learners can response via a comment function. This combines the use of podcast with blogs.
  • Journalism Education: School podcasts can be created to expose students to journalism and new-media concepts. Regularly released "news" podcasts can be released by a school group.[22]
  • Academic Journal Digests: The Society of Critical Care Medicine has a podcast used to update clinicians with summaries of important articles, as well as interviews.[23]
  • Supply Chain Management Education: In October, 2007 Dr Stephan Brady presented his paper on "Podcasting in Supply Chain Education" at the CSCMP Educators Conference. In this paper he outlined how podcasting can be used in and outside of the classroom for enhancing supply chain courses through blended, or hybrid learning.
  • Professional Development: Professional development podcasts exist for educators. Some podcasts may be general in nature or may be slightly more specific and focus on the use of interactive white boards in the classroom.
  • Religion: Godcasting has been used by many religious groups.[24] Many churches produce podcasts of talks and sermons. Disciples with Microphones provides podcasts relating to the Catholic Church.[25]
  • Tutorials: A tutorial on almost any subject can be created as either an audio podcast or video vodcast. Through screencasting, many video podcasts demonstrate how to use software and operating systems.

Entertainment

  • Comedy. Comedians such as Ricky Gervais, Stephen Fry and Marc Maron have created some of the most popular podgrams.
  • Television commentary. Battlestar Galactica writer and executive producer Ronald D. Moore creates commentary podcasts for each new episode of Battlestar Galactica.[26] Other television shows such as Doctor Who have since followed suit.
  • Radio series. Some radio programmes such as The Now Show and The News Quiz allow entire episodes to be downloaded as podcasts.
  • As a platform for fan DVD-style commentary tracks (Audio commentary). Enables fans to add their own comments and thoughts to any of their favourite films.
  • Sports. In 2005, unofficial podcasts for major sports teams launched, providing fans both in and outside of the teams' direct broadcast areas with on-demand commentary. The Cubscast founders also formed the first city-specific sports podcast network, hosting one podcast for each major Chicago team.[27]
  • Pornography. Porncasting and podnography are sometimes used to refer to pornography in podcasts.
  • Reintroducing Classical Children's Literature. Podcasts such as Albert Lea Public Library's Classics On-the-Go program bring classical (noncopyrighted) children's literature back to life for everyone to share.
  • Fiction. Podcasts like Escape Pod are used to distribute short stories in audio book format. Other podcasts distribute stories in the format of radio drama.[28]

News

  • Newspapers. Newspapers use podcasts to broadcast audio content from print interviews and drive traffic to their websites. The San Francisco Chronicle is believed to be the first major daily newspaper to start podcasting using an external website,[29] in Feb 2005. Hong Kong's South China Morning Post was the first to use its own website and the first in Asia, having launched on April 19, 2005[30]
  • Communication from space. On 7 August 20 ng.[31]
  • Conference and meeting alerts. Podcasts can be packaged to alert attendees to agendas, hosted roundtables and daily feedback.

Music

  • Replacement for live music audio streams. Whereas streaming a performance live over the Internet requires careful coordination of person and machine, podcasting offers the ability to do slight time-shifting of performances and greatly reduces the complexity of the effort. The quality of the program is often higher as post-production adjustments can be made prior to release. For example, programs can provide a live stream of their program, but most listeners don't hear it until weeks later on NPR. Podcasted versions of the programs split the difference, usually coming out a few days after the live program, but well before the traditional broadcast.

Politics

  • Politics: In the U.S., both major political parties have various podcasts, as do numerous politicians.

Publicity and marketing

  • As a promotional vehicle for an upcoming event, such as Pixar's Cars Video Podcast, which advertised the release of Disney/Pixar's Cars animated feature film with a series of behind-the-scenes clips.[32]

Health

  • Health, fitness and wellness resources, both general and specific.

Special interests

  • Farm Podcasting makes information available about farming. The term was coined to identify a program that is produced exclusively as a podcast on the subject of agriculture. There are now multiple companies who specialize in farm podcasting and are producing regular programming targeted to farmers and the general public on the subject of agriculture.

Non-traditional and alternative content

  • A way for people and organizations to avoid regulatory bodies, such as the British Ofcom, or American Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that would not allow a program to be broadcast in traditional media.

See also

Notes and references

  1. ^ Hew, K. (2009). Use of audio podcast in k-12 and higher education: a review of research topics and methodologies. Association for Educational Communications and Technology, 333-358. doi: DOI 10.1007/s11423-008-9108-3
  2. ^ Kennedy, Randy. 2005. "With Irreverence and an iPod, Recreating the Museum Tour." In The New York Times, 2005-05-28.
  3. ^ "Textcasting," anyone? at Slate
  4. ^ O’Bannon, B., Lubke, J., Beard, J., & Britt, V. (2011). Using podcasts to replace lecture: Effects on student achievement. Computers & Education, 1885-1892
  5. ^ O’Bannon, B., Lubke, J., Beard, J., & Britt, V. (2011). Using podcasts to replace lecture: Effects on student achievement. Computers & Education, 1885-1892
  6. ^ Warren, K. (2011). Utilising podcasts for learning and teaching: a review and ways forward for e-learning cultures. Management in Education, 26(2), 52-57.
  7. ^ Evans, J. (2007, June 7). Podcasting Across the Curriculum MANACE, AGM Presentation.
  8. ^ McFadden, A. (2008). Podcasting and really simple syndication (rss). Unpublished manuscript, College of Human Environmental Sciences Institute for Interactive Technology, The University of Alabama, Alabama, mississippi.
  9. ^ O’Bannon, B., Lubke, J., Beard, J., & Britt, V. (2011). Using podcasts to replace lecture: Effects on student achievement. Computers & Education, 1885-1892.
  10. ^ McFadden, A. (2008). Podcasting and really simple syndication (rss). Unpublished manuscript, College of Human Environmental Sciences Institute for Interactive Technology, The University of Alabama, Alabama, mississippi.
  11. ^ O’Bannon, B., Lubke, J., Beard, J., & Britt, V. (2011). Using podcasts to replace lecture: Effects on student achievement. Computers & Education, 1885-1892.
  12. ^ McFadden, A. (2008). Podcasting and really simple syndication (rss). Unpublished manuscript, College of Human Environmental Sciences Institute for Interative Technology, The University of Alabama, Alabama, mississippi.
  13. ^ Shamburg, C. (2009). Beyond podcasting:a paradigm shift. InStudent-Powered Podcasting (pp. 4-12).
  14. ^ Shamburg, C. (2010). DIY podcasting in education. In Knobel, M & Lankshear, C. (Eds.), DIY Media: Sharing Creating and Learning with New Media (pp.51-75). New York: Peter Lang.
  15. ^ Warren, K. (2011). Utilising podcasts for learning and teaching: a review and ways forward for e-learning cultures. Management in Education, 26(2), 52-57.
  16. ^ Shamburg, C. (2009). Beyond podcasting:a paradigm shift. InStudent-Powered Podcasting (pp. 4-12).
  17. ^ Gatewood, K. (2008). Podcasting: Just the basics. ProQuest Education Journals, 44(2), 90-93.
  18. ^ Musselburgh Grammar School Podcast
  19. ^ TAMA LEAVER (4). "All Good Things ..." (Blog). iGeneration DIGITAL COMMUNICATION & PARTCIPATORY CULTURE. Google. Retrieved 1 June 2012. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= and |year= / |date= mismatch (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  20. ^ http://www.caret.cam.ac.uk
  21. ^ "A Journey to Podcasting" (PDF).
  22. ^ Richardson, W. (2006). Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and the Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. Thousand Oaks: Corwin Press.
  23. ^ Society of Critical Care Medicine Podcasts
  24. ^ Heinen, Tom. 2005. "Podcasting becomes another pulpit." In JS Online, 2005-06-11.
  25. ^ Disciples with Microphones
  26. ^ http://www.scifi.com/battlestar/downloads/podcast/
  27. ^ http://www.chicagosportscasts.com
  28. ^ Lichtig, Toby (24 April 2007). "The podcast's the thing to revive radio drama". London: The Guardian. Retrieved 2010-05-27.
  29. ^ San Francisco Chronicle Podcast.
  30. ^ South China Morning Post Podcast.
  31. ^ http://www1.nasa.gov/returntoflight/crew/robinson_podcast.html
  32. ^ http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=152605772
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