PoducateMe: Practical Solutions for Podcasting in Education
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What’s a Podcast?
First and foremost, contrary to what the name implies, podcasts do not have to be
listened to on an iPod. Any device that can play MP3 files, including desktop and laptop
computers, as well as MP3-capable PDAs and phones are capable of playing podcast
files encoded in the MP3 file format.
So, what exactly is a podcast? A podcast is simply a collection of individual audio or
video (also known as a “vodcast”) episodes typically recorded and edited on a computer,
encoded in the MP3 file format, then uploaded to a Web server. Users of “podcatcher”
software, such as Apple’s iTunes, are then able to download episodes from the server to
their computers and listen to the recordings on their systems or transfer them to a media
player such as an iPod. Because episodes may be listened to at any time and anywhere,
a popular analogy is to think of podcasts as TiVo for radio.
While audio files have been available for download from the Internet for some time now,
what makes podcast episode files unique lies in how they are disseminated. Podcast files
are referenced in XML-based RSS (Really Simple Syndication) “feeds” (files containing
lines of code), which make it possible for listeners to easily subscribe to and automatically
download new episodes as they are uploaded to the Internet. This process can be
likened to a magazine subscription: After subscribing to a magazine, new issues
automatically arrive in your mailbox as they are published.
Some people will place audio files on the Internet and call it a podcast. However, if the
“podcast” does not contain a subscription mechanism, it’s not a podcast, but simply a
collection of audio files housed on a server.
Using CareerChat as an example, the following graphic provides a general overview of
the podcasting process for an audio file:
