Hello,
‘Podcasting’ stands for Personal, On, Demand Viewing of videos, or listening to radio programs produced by individuals.
The idea of recording television first became popular because people developed desires to watch their favourite television programs at other times than the television stations were offering them. Listeners also had to tune in to radio stations at the right time to hear radio programs that they enjoyed.
The first solution to this problem was the VCR (video cassette recorder). Sony did produce its own version of the VCR termed the BETA recorder but it virtually performed the same operation as the VCR. Later the DVD (Digital Video Disc) recorder was produced, and currently the most popular form or recording is via the PVR (Personal Video Recorder).
PVR devices are typically supplied by the cable companies as incentives to sign up with them for multi-year contracts. The PVR unit’s record onto a hard drive, meaning there is no media disc or tape. The hard drive can hold hundreds of hours of television and recorded shows can be erased at any time. The nice thing about PVR units is that you can set them to record at similar times during the day or each week. The one drawback of the PVR unit is that it must be connected to a cable source to receive the video feed.
Enter the newest technology of Podcasting. From viewing the youtube video: Podcasting in Plain English http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMgemQahuFM, I make sense of the technology by comparing it to a wireless version of a PVR. The word ‘wireless’ refers to the lack of internet connection with respect to Mp3 players and wireless internet connections. Where the PVR has to be connected to an internet or cable source to record a television show, a device such as an Ipod or Mp3 player can receive the latest podcast recording wirelessly while in the user’s pocket!
To receive a podcast wirelessly, the user must first download a program that is able to receive or ‘capture’ the incoming podcast information. The capturing devices are termed ‘pod-catchers’ and be as simple as an iTunes program.
The actual technology available for this to work is quite amazing. I never knew what podcasting was until this blog post. Though the technology is great, I feel that the freedom to produce and ‘cast’ radio and video over the internet is far greater. Podcasting creates more ways for people to express themselves in an easy manner, and gives way to a far greater ‘electronic’ freedom of speech.
So for the actual creation of a podcast I visited the website www.podomatic.com and created a user account. Funny, this was one of the first accounts I had to create because google doesn’t own this website and I therefore can’t use my google email address. All the previous web tools have been owned or linked to google and one didn’t need to make a whole new account. Anyways, the podomatic site had a great layout and a very hip feel while you were visiting. Creating an account was easy and I liked how you didn’t need to go back to your email and enter in any verification code. Once you entered your email address and full name, you could begin immediately with your first podcast.
The process of publishing a podcast was similar to other web tools, as the site prompted you for a title and message for your podcast. At first I thought podcasts were all video based and was worried about the transfer process from my camcorder to my computer. Then after searching around I found that podcasts can also be strictly audio-based as well. Before creating my podcast account, and my first podcast, I had used my windows basic audio recorder to record a quick audio clip. I didn’t know where the microphone is on my laptop but as soon as I hit record and began to talk, my message was being recorded.
Once I had created an account, I uploaded my audio recording and posted it on my podcast homepage. One note is that the audio clip must be recorded elsewhere prior to making the podcast posting. The Podomatic site only organizes the already-created media. This site does not help with the specific creation of audio or video. The user must upload established material before entering the ‘make a podcast’ section of Podomatic. After creating my first podcast, I copied the hyperlink and posted it within my blog. It looked fine but I then desired to have it embedded into the site to create an easier access for visitors to my blog. You have to click on a few extra buttons within the Podomatic site and find the button that states ‘embed within facebook or a website’. When you follow the embed button, you’re provided with the embed code in which you can cut and paste as you wish into any sort of web document. One final note, prior to pasting the embed code into your blog, be sure to click the correct tab button so that your blog post accepts, and processes the ‘html’ embed code correctly.
In the future I would love to create more podcasts and would love to later experiment with video as well. As for teaching, a podcast would be a great accompaniment to any teacher website for a course. I teach math so I’ve thought about creating weekly podcasts which would verbally explain math concepts along with video footage too.
Please see my embedded podcast message in my previous blog post.
Thanks. -Regen
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