Examples of course podcasts and case studies: the possibilities of podcasting
Possible points of discussion
What types of content are being podcast?
Are there best practices emerging?
REcording entire lecture is generally frowned on: better to use for meaningful snippets, etc.
One prof at IU asks students to work in pairs to record their own understanding of the previous lecture's concepts.
What hardware / software do you recommend?
m-audio microtrack 24-96 records directly in mp3 format to a flash card. Cost about $400.00, but quality is top-notch.
Olympus's voice recorders - allows recording WAV, but very cost-effective.
What research is being dome on the effectiveness of podcasting in teaching and learning?
What about the production quality of the podcasts themselves?
What is the value of video casting? Do we have value added by introducing video? Is there something more innovative than just putting the lecture online?
How about bringing in experts? Vidcast would provide 'instant access' to experts in the field.
Anybody doing slide-shows timed with audio?
IN IUPUI COP, nobody is using this yet.
But one prof at IUPUI is looking for ways to incorporate snippets of video, providing some kind of enhanced experience for students.
How are students supported in the creation of their podcasts?
Local IUPUI computing centers provide support for students, copying the physical layout of the faculty support space.
ITTE offers training in audio recording for podcasting.
We use Garage Band, Audacity, SoundForge.
We use Camtasia and Captivate for teaching process.
Comment on Captivate: evaluated as very good for walk-through of tasks etc.
Camtasia easy to use; workable as a video editing; geared for shorter things.
Comments on WEbcast from Berkley
Completely automated system, meant to be long, ot short.
Haven't yet explored the advantages to faculty vs student -produced content.
Admin functions in podcast tool in Sakai - difficulty managing large amount of content or many items.
Difficulty in manipulating stuff manually, but they're (Berkley) switching to automation.
Methods for automatic timings, trimmings, coding, etc.
Discussed extending admin interface to make it more usable for instructors.
Ability to annotate podcast entries,which would give added value. There are tools out there that allow this, but not right now in sakai.
Possiblity of student-created podcasts being added to e-portfolios.
Dropping the live broadcast of courses, though the fact that you're able to view something live can be useful, given the context (advertising of university?)
But for EVENTS, they will maintain the capability for live netcasts.
Who is the audience for those events?
Depends on the event - ex-president? [at IU,live webcast of entire opera]
U-virginia
Faculty member developing site where students take HIS podcasts, and re-engineer them,mash up, then resubmit, having them connected somehow to the original,and track the evolution of the original. Part of evaluation, students rate each other's submissions, thereby raising the quality of the podcasts, both in terms of content and quality.
At IU we have high-end equipment for check-out, and we provide support, training and help, so that they can start with higher quality of contant.
Do students want to use their mobile device to learn?
Very engaging question.
"Students' laptop is their mobile device."
Podcasts pushed to ITunesU, but students do not go there
Question of accessibility - how easy is it to make these accessible?
Garage band offers the possibility of attaching a transcript of the podcast;
at IU, accessibility office will product transcript as needed.
Share resources
Please post links to resources for academic podcasting with a brief description
Podcasting Initiatives at Indiana University, 8th Sakai Conference, Newport Beach, CA, USA 3-7 Dec 2007
Report on Screen Capture - Compared 11 software products.
TLTC web page on Podcasting for Instruction
Teaching and Learning Technologies Centers, Indiana University-Bloomington
links to information on software for podcast recording and editing, and to presentations at the center
Screen and Audio Capture Report - Mathieu Plourde, University of Delaware: http://copland.udel.edu/~mathieu/sc/
A report on different software products for screen capture and PowerPoint conversion with audio.