#21: Can you hear me now?

It may seem that this Thing is out of place. I mean all those videos you found in your Discovery Activity for Thing 20 had sounds with them -- raucous music or a soft puppy yip or two. But sound isn't the same thing as a podcast -- they are cousins, maybe even siblings, but not twins.

A technical tidbit: Podcasts are just audio files (generally in a special format called .mp3) to which you can subscribe using RSS (remember that from Thing 8?). If you subscribe to a podcast, you don't have to remember to check for new files; you're notified automatically. Our audio snippets at the beginning of each Thing aren't technically "podcasts" because we didn't make them available that way, but we could have done so (and might in the future). Our audio snippets were created with and hosted on Odeo.

Podcasting, in the words of the late great Ed Sullivan, is big. Really, really big. You can learn about podcasting in general from EduCause's 7 Things 2-pager on podcasting, or from Carnegie Mellon's white paper on podcasting. You can find everything you need to know about how to do podcasting on our own 23-Thinger Alisa Cooper's wiki, "Coop's Word: Technology Use In & Out of the Classroom." If you're interested in where we're going in Maricopa, take a look at Veronica Diaz's blog post on iTunesU at Maricopa.

So in this Thing, we're just going to dip one big toe into the world of audio.

A bit of techy talk here: In order to listen to an audio file (like our comments at the beginning of each thing), you either need a computer with speakers (external or built-in) or earphones (that fit over your ears) or earbuds (tiny little things that fit inside your ears). But you already knew that, right? Or have we been whistling in the wind for the past 8 weeks? If you want to listen on-the-go, you need an mp3 player that you can clip on your belt or stick in your pocket. Those players usually have some kind of a docking station or cord that allows you to automatically download your files to them (and recharge the player's batteries at the same time.) But you know that you can also listen to an audio file just by clicking on the little embedded player on these blog posts. We're keeping it simple today.

Mp3 players aren't expensive -- you can find quite a few at less than $50, and you can find podcasts to load on to them for free. Did I mention that there are scads of free podcasts?


Discovery Resources:

In Thing #20, we introduced a number of search engines for finding videos, but many of them also find podcasts. You should see some familiar options: Most Recent, Most Popular, specific categories, etc. Just like with video, you can find your podcasts "raw or refined." Here are some places to look:

• Yahoo! Podcasts (I like their simple explanation of podcasting in the banner at the top of their page.)


• Podscope (which says it searches the audio itself; it doesn't rely on tags)


• Podcast.net (uses categories and keywords, much like searching a library database)


• NPR's Podcast Directory (these are professionally produced radio shows)


• Podcast Alley (select a specific genre to narrow your search choices)

Discovery Activity:

1. Explore various categories of podcasts using a couple of different search engines and listen to some podcasts at random. Make sure to listen to some that are serious and some that are fun!


2. Subscribe to a podcast using RSS, or download a podcast to your mp3 player.


3. Write a blog entry that reflects on what you found (or didn't find).
   

Did you know that more and more podcasting sites (like evoca and Gabcast) allow you to record a podcast from your cell phone? Everyone can be a podcaster now and just phone it in.