March 06, 2005
TECHNOLOGIES: Podcasting & the "Radio Revolution"
Interesting article in BusinessWeek Online about podcasting and other digital forms of audio broadcasting as a threat to traditional commercial airwaves.
It took me a while to start paying attention to this technology... and podcasting is a term that confused me at first, since I immediately assumed it had something to do with real-time audio broadcasting. I suppose this reflects my own bias again time-shifting for any purposes other than work and class... While I record all of my virtual classroom sessions for students who want to review them or who are participating in classes asynchronously, I'm not much for recording or downloading anything for entertainment purposes only (I don't own an iPod, and I don't even need one hand to count the number of times in the last year that I've had any desire to record anything I might miss on TV).
For those who are still confused about the terminology, basically, "podcasting" is a way of distributing audio files through RSS feeds. "Podcasters" create audio files for download to digital players and prepare them for syndication. Using an aggregator, users subscribe to particular podcasts, and the feeds they subscribe to download to their iPods automatically when they connect to the Internet. (You can learn more about what edubloggers have been saying about podcasting on Stephen Downes's Edu_RSS search page for podcasting.)
(article link via slashdot)
Posted by Joanne Tzanis at March 6, 2005 12:30 PM
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