Podcasting and MSU
What it's all about
August 20 , 2007
If you've paid attention to technology in the media in the past two years, the term podcasting has probably come across your eyes more than once. It is quickly becoming a mainstream term in conversations when there is a discussion about delivering more content to audiences. At MSU, the audiences are students and divisions within Libraries, Computing and Technology that have been working hard to give faculty a way to make use of this technology for their courses.
For those unfamiliar with podcasting, here are the basics: The name podcasting originated from Apple's iPod and the term broadcasting. Podcasting is receiving a digital file via a subscription on a personal computer or portable media device. Just like signing up for a magazine subscription, the next issue, or file, will automatically arrive to your computer when you launch iTunes or whatever software program you use to “catch” the podcasts. The subscription is generated by Really Simple Syndication (RSS). An RSS feed is an XML file that automatically updates the subscription when a new file is ready for delivery from the server. Popular web services for RSS feed generation are Feed For All and Feed Burner. Feed readers or aggregators, like Google Reader, Feedreader3 and Feed Demon allow you to subscribe to and manage all of your feeds. These readers usually manage feeds from blogs, news services or web pages. iTunes manages your audio and video podcast subscriptions.
Here at MSU, faculty interested in adding podcasted content to their courses has a few resources to get them started. For those interested in creating digital media files from existing technology classrooms on campus, Instructional Media Center (IMC) offers several classrooms equipped to record digital media files using Audacity or Camtasia Studio 4.0. They also offer a number of classrooms set up for faculty to use their own laptop with the classroom audio system.
If faculty would prefer a more guided podcast creation process, Interactive Video Services (IVS) offers start to finish services in their production classrooms – pre-production, production, post production, publishing, and support. IVS has staff that will walk faculty through the entire process and help them decide the best way to design their content for a podcast.
For those interested in exploring the creation of podcast content on their own at home or in their office, the MSU Podcasting Project web site offers Do-It-Yourself advice regarding hardware and software. And lastly, for faculty interested in recording content in the field, for example in a lab, they can check with their departments for equipment, purchase their own or contact IMC, IVS or VuDAT.
VuDAT has a new resource, Storemedia, which utilizes the university streaming server for content storage and RSS feed creation. Visit the Storemedia and VuDAT website to learn more.
iPods, software and hardware for creating podcasts can be purchased through the MSU Computer Store.
Links to key resources at MSU and other tools
MSU Podcasting Project - http://podcast.msu.edu
IVS - http://ivs.msu.edu
IMC - http://imc.msu.edu/index.php?id=home
vuDAT - http://vudat.msu.edu
LCTTP Training - http://train.msu.edu
Audacity, .mp3 creation software - http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
Camtasia Studio 4.0 – http://techsmith.com/camtasia.asp
Apple, Inc. - http://www.apple.com
Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podcasting
