My friend and colleague, Alan Levine, did remember to press the little red record button right before we started talking for our ELI session. He captured the whole thing (I think as I haven't listened to it) and posted it. Alan, Jim Groom, and I spend the better part of an hour discussing blogs as publishing platforms and work to answer as many questions as we can. Might be worth a listen -- if you are into that sort of thing.
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Being able to time shift academic content is proving to be an important and emerging trend on campus. Students are making time to interact with educational content in ways they haven't in the past and we feel it is important to understand that.
The Podcasts at Penn State project's goal is to provide a platform to enable easy podcasting for all members of our target audiences.
Everywhere you turn there are white earbuds. As a matter of fact 37% of our students own iPods according to last year's FACAC survey and 67% own MP3 players in general ... you could say the market is right for providing portable content.
There is a trend here that suggests our younger students will be more prepared for content delivered in this format. I am anxious to see what the results will look like for 2007.
On January 19th ETS will roll out the second version of the Podcasts at Penn State site. The new version will provide cleaner integration with Penn State on iTunes U as well as improved access to help materials. The new site will form the home for the Penn State Podcasting Users Group.
Chris Millet is the project manager for the Podcasts at Penn State project. When not meeting with the faculty engaged in podcasting, Chris can be caught recording the iTunes U Tuesday podcast.
Tim Perry spends much of his time working with faculty and other groups on campus to bring them into the podcasting fold. His obvious enthusiasm for podcasting is what hooks our audience.
When we move out of pilot we have the start to some very nice collateral materials. Even without a drop of marketing Penn State on iTunes U sees significant weekly traffic. We average about 1300 unique downloads a month from the iTunes U site. subscriptions are growing as well, so people are visiting less and receiving more via RSS.
Our iTunes U environment ... anyone can access hundreds of podcasts within our space. Log in at http://itunes.psu.edu.
Our partnership with Apple provides us with a storage and distribution platform that is designed specifically for managing podcasts in an educational environment. We are working hard to make the solution as integrated as we possibly can with PSU infrastructure.
Audacity is a cross platform podcasting solution that we have made available in all of our public classrooms and labs. In addition, about 20 of our classrooms are fully equipped with wireless microphones tied directly to the podium machines.
