Podcasting vs. Vidcasting
Written on March 8, 2008 by Devon Adams
In part, podcasting and vidcasting is part of this week’s focus. My colleague Alisa Cooper must sit around making podcasts and blogs all day. She always seems to have podcasts ready for her classes, and I wonder how the English 101 course can implement casting. At minimum a podcast or vidcast should introduce each week’s work. For example, My most recent English 102 course was required to complete an Annotated Bibliography, and a few of the students were confused about the assignment. I am in an interesting situation where half of my English 102 students are concurrently enrolled from my current high school AP classes. The students I see face to face can ask me to explain the assignments when they see me, while the students I have never met personally only have my email replies. If I had posted a vidcast or podcast, then that extra instruction may have supplemented my syllabus.
There are pros and cons about vidcasting and podcasting for me. Remember that you may disagree, but I’ve done some video and tried my hand at podcasting. My problem with podcasting is I typically am a perfectionist. I started out this year wanting to podcast about technology and education, and I have two posted here. While the recording took me about 10-15 minutes, the editing usually took about 90 minutes. This isn’t something I have time for every day or even once a week. I also like to add the intro and conclusion music. When recording a podcast, if I mess up, I typically pause for a few seconds and repeat the last thing I said. Then later I have to edit that section out in Garage Band. Alisa doesn’t bother and leaves in the errors, while I’ve only head Shelley post through Gabcast, which is from her cell phone (at least she doesn’t record with the top down on her Spyder!).
My other problem is with where to submit these podcasts online. As you can tell above, if you clicked on my podcasts link, I just stuck them in an online folder. But I want them to be fed through iTunes University. Alisa, at another college, has access to upload her own podcasts to iTunes U. When I asked our iTunes person about this, he said I would submit them to him and he would upload them. This turned me off. If I have more control, I would be more interested in trying to be more consistent with this. If I have to then submit them, wait for the guy to upload them after he does his other work, and then go look for them, then I am not going to be that interested. Another thing to consider is that the more and more instructors who use podcasting from their classes, if the iTunes guy thinks he’s going to be uploading ALL of their casts himself, then he will never get his regular work done. Now if the files are larger than the max attachment size, I know how to post online and send him a link to download the file (yes, and then upload it again. How time consuming!!). But a colleague who is trying casting for the first time and just knows how to speak into the mic, push record in garage band or audacity, and save the file, may not have the know-how to post something online for our iTunes guy. If his argument is that he wants to preview submissions, etc… then his workload just increased again!
I wonder if I can embed and syndicate my casting through my Wordpress blog, but then it’s not searchable in iTunes. Ugh.
As for vidcasting, you add the whole appearance thing. This means I gotta work on my class with clothes on! Damn. No I am most kidding. I do wear clothes. I can attest that I am typing this in Steelers PJ Pants, an inside out free t-shirt from the Lymphoma Society with some quote by Mandy Moore, drinking black coffee, with my 2 1/2 year old kissing Elmo on the television screen and the wife sitting next to me working on her online Master’s degree. Does someone want to have THAT in their vidcast? Maybe if I posted on Dad Bloggers, sure.
For the English 101 course we’re building, perhaps one of these methods could work. If we do it correctly. I like the idea of podcasting for this because the course will be taught by more than one instructor. If I vidcast weekly or even for each module, and then Shelley teaches a section, then her students will wonder why their female instructor has a beard, and that’s just damn odd.
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You know me…gotta be thinking about the “good enough” versions of these multi-modal productions. Our, instead, think about their rhetorical purpose. If they are only going to be listened to/viewed/consumed by a group once, then maybe just “good enough.” If you can reuse them in future courses…it’s worth taking the time and energy to polish them. broken record, broken record, broken record.
You can create a podcast using your blog and then submit the podcast to iTunes. It won’t show up on your school’s itunes page but it will be in iTunes. I actually prefer to not have the podcast exclusively in iTunes. The blog works best for some students who aren’t really into music and iTunes. I like variety.
If you start podcasting on a regular basis, you’ll get over that perfectionist thing quick. I do edit, but I don’t spend 90 minutes, that’s for sure.
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