Time-to-Adoption: One Year or Less
This is the leading edge of a wave that will last for the next several years and beyond. The increasing presence of ever more capable devices among students, such as today's iPods, has already spurred the creation of podcast content expressly for that platform. The promise of portable devices is that they are small and students already own and carry them; the challenge is to deliver content and services to those devices, when they are popular, whatever they are.
Taking the iPod phenomenon as an example, it seems obvious in retrospect why it has become so widespread. Young people were the target of very sophisticated marketing campaigns that assured the popularity of the iPod; almost overnight, it seemed that nearly everyone had one. The appeal of the device itself was increased by its size (tiny) and weight (light). Utterly portable, popular, and cute, the iPod is also incredibly easy to use: adding musical content is a snap. The brilliant stroke here was to take advantage of this ready-made, widely available tool and deliver educational content for it as well.
Many students who own laptops do not carry them to class, because they are bulky and heavy and uncool. Small devices like the iPod, however, go wherever the student goes. Since students buy them anyway, universities do not incur the expense of providing the equipment. Even the content delivery mechanism has been provided for: any mp3 file can be downloaded and copied onto the device.
The portable device trend is only beginning. As soon as other devices commonly carried by students (think digital phones) have similar capabilities, and as soon as we figure out how to get content onto them, this trend will really take off.
Relevance for Teaching, Learning & Creative Expression
- opens up possibilities for access to content (lectures, commentary, foreign language tools; eventually images, video...)
- takes advantage of devices students already own and use
Examples
- Edupodder.com is a website founded and maintained by an academic technologist at San Jose State University. The site includes resources, examples and a blog about the medium of podcasting. http://www.edupodder.com/
- Databases are being developed to maintain information that can be downloaded to mobile phone users. One such database, BioWAP, allows the mobile user to search nucleotide and protein sequence databases, along with other types of biological data. http://bioinf.uta.fi/courses/WappaW/BioWAP.html
For Further Reading
Professor in Your Pocket
(Peg Tyre, Newsweek, November 28, 2005.) Discusses how students and faculty are using and seeing lecture podcasts, and some of the issues that arise.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10117475/site/newsweek/
Wikipedia: Podcasting
The Wikipedia offers an extensive article on the history and current state of podcasting, including links to examples, tutorials, and discussion about the topic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podcasting