As a higher web professional, I’m sure you’ve already heard and read a lot about podcasting.
Your director, VP and President have not, so it might be a good idea to share this post with them.
The past week has witnessed a lot of media coverage about podcasting in higher education. A few interesting articles targeted to the non-initiated crowd and showcasing the possibilities of podcasting – especially for courses and classes – have been published and resulted in interesting comments from the early adopters and insiders:
Last Friday, “Missed class? Try a podcast” by Jodi Cohen, The Chicago Tribune‘s higher education reporter, offered a good round-up about podcasting as an academic tool.
But, you should also have a look at “Podcasting stirs more higher education debate”. In this post on his personal blog Moving at the Speed of Creativity, Wesley Fryer, Director of Instructional Support Services and Webmaster for the College of Education at Texas Tech University, offers his critical analysis of this article from the viewpoint of an academic podcasting evangelist.
“Lectures on the Go” by Brock Read published in this week’s issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education doesn’t add a lot to the Chicago Tribune’s piece, but – as you know – it can be helpful to read twice the same ideas presented in different ways.
The last piece you should share with your significant stakeholder combines the power of a reputable publication with the insights of the higher ed blogger and podcaster Gardner Campbell, Assistant Vice President for Teaching and Learning Technologies and Professor of English at the University of Mary Washington:
In “There’s Something in the Air: Podcasting in Education,†an essay published in the upcoming issue of the Educause Review and available online as a 347-KB PDF file as well as a 50-minute podcast on his blog, Gardner tells us the tale of Jenny and the magic podcast fields before giving us a complete overview of podcasting and its possibilities in academia.
This media coverage seems to have followed a yellow-brick road of several announcements pertaining to new podcasting initiatives at Drexel and Stanford, the launch of the iPod video as well as the Educause conference held last week in Orlando.
As the wonderful Wizard of Podz, Apple has probably suggested (or should I say “orchestrated?”) a good part of this media interest — from behind the curtain.
The company has actually partnered with Drexel who announced its new iPod Video initiative and with Stanford who launched its new dedicated iTunes Store. It also had an impressive booth at the Educause conference last week – according to Chimone Parris from the Apex School of Theology who attended and blogged the conference – and is the sponsor of the Podcasts produced during the event by the 3 Educause podcasters.
Higher ed is definitely a very interesting (and captive?) market for the company, even though you don’t need an iPod to delve into Podcasting…
As you know, a non-branded mp3 player – or even a simple computer for the people who are less on the go – is all you need to start to listen to Podcasts, as you can even download the free Windows version of iTunes to your PC.