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Emerging Technology: Podcasting

Journalism is a Conversation

JACC 2006

San Jose State UniversitySchool of Journalism & Mass Communications

Steve Sloansteve.sloan@sjsu.eduhttp://sloantech.blogspot.com/

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Podcasting:A topic of great

interest

See:

•www.mercurynews.com

•Itconversations.com

•Dangillmor.typepad.comThis is a podcast!

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Agenda What is podcasting? Emerging Technology (ET)

Define and understand ET Where podcasting fits into ET Disruptive Technology

Define and understand podcasting Podcasting nuts and bolts

How to create a podcast Podcasting tools

Summary Benefits of podcasting Downside of podcasting

Conclusion, credits and conversation

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Emerging technologies of the pastPortable phones once niche players in

telecommunications

Hard to use

Cumbersome

Expensive

Now considered one of the three things everybody has

Wallet/purse

Keys

Portable phone

Continuing to change face of society, this tech is still emerging

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What is Emerging Technology?

What are some emerging

technologies?

The adjective emerging has 3 meanings Coming into view

Coming into existence

Coming to maturity

Internet + Weblogging The read-write web

Dan Gillmor, “We the media”

User enabling software-hardware Common computers over 1 billion instructions a second (Super

Computers, “Lethal Weapons”)

Media creation applications such as iMovie, iPhoto etc.

Portable devices OQO, Sony devices, Nokia and “Scoble” phones

Always-on broadband in the home Cable-DSL

Ubiquitous connectivity, “digital dial tone” 802.11, Cellular, RSS, (wireless plus download)

See:

•www.answers.com

•www.bushin30seconds.org

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Understanding ET

“Disruptive Technology”

Sustaining verses emerging “disruptive” technologies Disruptive, in this case, means products and technologies that

disrupt established solutions and markets, but sustain the underlying process

In an educational setting this can be viewed as methods that offer easier, faster, better and/or cheaper ways improving learning outcomes

See:The Innovator's Dilemma, Clayton M. Christensen

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Impact of Disruptive

Technologies

At turn of the 20th Century the steam train was the transportation system of choice to meet underlying need to get from place to place

Safe

Comfortable

Fast

Relatively convenient

Internal combustion engine could not compete in core market and developed in niche market

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Impact of Disruptive

Technologies

By end of 20th Century, internal combustion engine has replaced steam engine in what was steam engine’s core market

Steam engine has become niche player

Railroads have declined, focused on freight, and are no longer a predominate mode of long distance travel

Disruptive Emerging Technologies Change markets, processes and paradigms

Existing paradigms are not secure

Start and develop in niche and often obscure markets

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Podcasting and Emerging

Technology

Podcasting is a subset of RSS which is a subset of Emerging Technology

Podcasting uses RSS v. 2.0 Enclosures

Includes video podcasting

XML based

Download based

Not dependent on high bandwidth

Thrives on relatively pervasive connectivity

Technically it is pull technology Push / pull convergence

Subscription required

Has push characteristics

“Long tail” technology

Infinite number of channels!

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Podcasting is Mixing of the words iPod and broadcasting

A web-based broadcast medium

Audio files (most commonly in MP3 format) Made available online

Software (like iPodder & xPodder) Automatically detects new files

Based on RSS v 2.0 enclosures

Downloads the files For listening at the user's convenience

Allows time shiftingSee:

•www.wikipedia.org

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Understanding Podcasting

A podcast is like an audio magazine subscription Subscribe to a feed

Subscriber receives regular audio programs delivered via the Internet

Can listen to them at their leisure

Differ from traditional internet audio in two important ways They can be listened to at any time because a copy is on the

listener's computer or portable music player (hence the "pod" in "podcasting")

Are automatically delivered to subscribers, so no active downloading is required

Podcasting is functionally similar to the use of timeshift-capable digital video recorders (DVRs) such as TiVo which lets users record and store television

programs for later viewing

Push / Pull convergence

See:

•www.wikipedia.org

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Podcasting is not just for audio

Video podcasting!(Vodcasting)

See:

• ABC News Video

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Any file can be in a feed, “x.casting”

See:

•www.feedforall.com

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Podcasting is not just for iPods

See:

•www.edupodder.com

•www.itconversations.com

•www.engadget.com

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XML code of a podcast

See:

•www.edupodder.com

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Not just for news!Some uses for

podcasting in education

For distance learning

To facilitate self-paced learning

For remediation of slower learners

To allow faculty to offer advanced and or highly motivated learners extra content

For helping students with reading and/or other learning disabilities

For multi-lingual education

To provide the ability for educators to feature guest speakers from remote locations

To allow guest speakers the ability to present once to many sections and classes

To allow educators to escape the tedium of lecturing

To offer a richer learning environment

See:

•www.edupodder.com

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How to subscribe to a podcast?

Started with iPodder.org Had to download a client

Note the number of supported platforms!

Find a podcast Use the tools

iTunes and iPodder have built in directories

You can search on-line or in iTunes

Started with ipodder.org

Note categories

Oh, you can always Google!

You can also selectively download using a browser

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Started with ipodder.org

See:

•www.ipodder.org

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Note supported platforms

See:

•www.ipodder.org

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Download a client

See:

•www.ipodder.org

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Find a feed using a tool like iTunes

See:

•www.ipodder.org

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Also search on-line at iPodder or use

Google

See:

•www.ipodder.org

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You can download a lot of content

See:

•www.ipodder.org

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Podcasts can automatically go into iTunes, then

your iPod

See:

•www.ipodder.org

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You can just download the files

too, the old fashioned way!

See:

•www.itconversations.com

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How to do a podcast?

See:

•www.graperadio.com

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Video vs. Audio Podcasting

Things to consider

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Producing a podcast

There are a lot of options Macintosh

Use GarageBand and iTunes, etc.

Similar Windows programs

Audacity is cross platform

On-line options increasingly available

Generating Feed The XML feed can be generated automatically using

tools

Feeder is a middle way of generating the feed

You can copy a feed that validates and change the information in the XML file manually

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Audioblog

Eric Rice

See:

•www.audioblog.com

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This is Odeo

See:

•www.odeo.com

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Odeo offers some attractive features

Access Control Lists (ACLs) on the roadmap

Can control who can get access to content

Easy to use user interface

Evan Williams, former co-founder of Pyra Labs

Pyra created “Blogger”

Blogger is now owned by Google

See:

•odeo.com

•Flickr.com

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Audioblogger

See:

•www.audioblogger.com

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Feeder:A feed centric

approach?

See:

•www.reinventedsoftware.com

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One podcasting kit

See:

•www.pwop.com

Less than $400!

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One podcasting kit High-quality gear that is also compact and affordable

You don't need a computer in order to record your voice

The mic plugs into the preamp. The preamp plugs into the recording device's line input, and the headphones plug into the recording device's headphone jack

Only the preamp requires AC power

Recording device uses a single AA battery which lasts a long time

See:

•www.pwop.com

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Lifeblog

See:

•mobile.kaywa.com

•www.nokia.com

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Podcasts to Go!

Podcasts to/from your phone

Podcasting and Skype

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Transparency By nature RSS is transparent This can be good or bad

Invites the world into the classroom

Some solutions for this

Use application layer security (SSL/SSH)

Tools like Odeo to feature ACLs

Do we adapt to provide more transparency, or do we adapt the tool to provide greater security? Route around nature of Internet may make it difficult to

not be transparent

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“When it comes to podcasting, we are

all newbies”~Doug Kaye

Tools are making podcasting easier and easier

Podcasting can be done from and to everything from desktop computers to cell phones

The key to podcasting is RSS

Download verses streaming

Low bandwidth tolerant

Podcasts are XML files

Platform and device agnostic

Dependent on capabilities of receiving device

A non-proprietary solution

Extends reach of Internet

Files are local

Works with cell phones

The browser can be taken out of the equation

An entire course can be contained in an RSS 2.0 feed

See:

•Itconversations.com

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Speech to textvs.

Text to speech

Speech to text hard part, the holy grail!

Searchability

Access to hearing impaired

Shares this issue with all content that is speech based

Text to speech huge strength of Podcasting

Can be a channel to supply information to visually impaired

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Downsides of podcasting(and RSS)

Depends on a relatively pervasive connection to the Internet at some point Upside, can be via telco

By nature it is transparent

Major changes in faculty/student relationship Value of human interaction cannot be ignored

What about the student peer relationship?

Amazonization of education

May prove to be a barrier to faculty and/or students who are tech challenged

Lack of searchability

Potential for information overload

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The future of RSS 2.0 “xcasting”

Change of role of podcast journalist Free Agency or Aggregation Model?

Niche Programming (The Long Tail)

Tons of new tools!

Secure RSS of some kind ACL’s

Certificate based?

The feed could provide the initial handshake

Increase in types of content delivered this way Move beyond audio

The aggregator becomes the browser

As E-mail fails, increase in RSS as a trusted source communication channel

Education specific tools

Challenge to browser based solutions

Speech conversion More searchability

Better metadata

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Credits Special thanks to

Robert Scoble

The Gillmor brothers

Dan

Steve

Doug Kaye

Lenn Pryor

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Contact info and conversation

SJSU Steve.sloan@sjsu.edu

(408) 924-2374

General Skype/AIM: ssloansjca

Web: www.edupodder.comMain Geek Blog: sloantech.blogspot.com

(408) 605-0692

S_sloan@mac.com

Conversation What do you think of podcasting?

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www.sjsu.edu/cats/2003/showcase/