CSS Technology

Hundred Year Flood's Bill Palmer and Felecia Ford are embracing the new music business model: powered by the internet, powered by protools, powered by social networking. MySpace and FaceBook are allowing the band to reach places that would not have been possible with the traditional touring paradigm. And it allows them to be the gate keepers for their music, and their records.

Bill Palmer, has a keen eye for where the recording industry is headed. He is part of the recording revolution that is allowing small and medium sized recording studios to thrive. Bill is an engineer and producer for Frogville Records, and he has a relaxed approach to recording that emphasizes creativity.

Felecia Ford, besides being a vocal powerhouse in the band, is the community manager, maintaining relationships with the band’s many fans through their MySpace presence, and other social networking platforms. I joined Bill and Felecia at Frogville Records Studio in Santa Fe to learn more about the band, and more about how they are leading the charge into a new world of music production and distribution.

Jeremiah Owyang, of Forester Research, says their research indicates “a majority of teens in North America are using social networks, in fact more than 2/3rds are active monthly users, and about 1/5th are daily users." He goes on to say, "We’re all aware of the stories of how teens are using these tools to communicate as their primary forms above phone, and even email.”

It's no surprise to hear that universities are attempting to understand social networking applications such as Facebook, and how they might be leveraged to better understand the student population. Two words: “Good luck.”

Forrester research defines Social Computing as: “A social structure in which technology puts power in communities, not institutions.” Owyang says this is also true for social networks.

I am betting that most Facebook users consider their social network to be part of their private lives. I am not sure that students would be eager to have institutions conducting some sort of behavioral science experiment aimed at providing the institution with a much-needed clue. Community is about engaging people, not watching them from a safe distance like zoologist Marlin Perkins did in old TV episodes of Wild Kingdom. I am not saying universities are incapable of engaging the student community; I am saying that they may not realize how much work they have cut out for themselves. Engagement means living in the application and establishing individual relationships, not conducting research or other activities that may be perceived as eavesdropping.

Students' expectations of Facebook being their private space may be a bit naïve, of course. Corporations are eavesdropping. BBC News reported that brand advisory and marketing company 1000heads monitors conversations on behalf of big brand clients on Facebook and other websites. Facebook has been open about its plans to capitalize on its popularity by creating one of the most powerful advertising tools available. Facebook will use the information members have submitted about themselves to allow advertisers to target particular social groups. Facebook will act as a proxy and send relevant ads directly to that targeted market.

Universities are in a better position to leverage social networking for genuine relationship buidling rather than for marketing and revenue opportunities. Universities are natural communities with a favorable environment for organic growth of social networks. Transforming campus directories into a social networking application would be a great place to start. Add classlists and calendaring, links to advising networks, the libraries, and other student services, and you might have an application worth living in.

The Satisfaction team posted video from the "Customer Service Is the New Marketing Summit." The video below is of a panel moderated by Brian Oberkirch. The panel includes:

• Patti Roll, Director of Community Marketing and e-Commerce, Timbuk2
  
• Tara Hunt, Founder, Citizen Agency
  
• Gina Bianchini, CEO, Ning
  
• Matt Mullenweg, Founder, Automatic and Wordpress
  

Again, thanks go out to Like it Matters for being the aggregator for these vids.

The video below is from the recent "Customer Service is the New Marketing Summit." Heather Champ (Flickr), Ross Mayfield(Rackspace), Pretap Prenumalli (Google) and Frederick Mendler (Rackspace) discuss scaling customer support. These companies use ticket systems to manage customer support -- like we do in many departments at UW -- and they also use the power of "community."



I originally found this video on Brian Oberkirch's blog. If you are interested learning more about customer service, social networking, social media, and new marketing, I encourage you to check out "Like it Matters".

Windows DC's like to set their address in DNS to also be the address of the domain itself, so our DNS ends up having this, among other things:
dc1.css.washington.edu -> <private IP 1>
dc2.css.washington.edu -> <private IP 2>
css.washington.edu -> <private IP 1>
css.washington.edu -> <private IP 2>

Those css.washington.edu records are totally useless, and they prevent us from using css.washington.edu as the address for any other server, e.g. a web server.

» Read more

Bradley Bell, Tim Batzel and I demonstrated our latest offering of an automated video screen capture system at the Pack Forest Conference Center today. The system replicates the automated model of our audio podcasting system, and delivers flash video, screen capture and sound to students via our classroom portal. Students can view lectures using our operating-system agnostic flash media-player software and they can skip ahead in each lecture with pre-made Bookmarks.

I talked to the audience about how the explosive growth of user-generated content, including blogging, digital videos, digital audio, mobile phone photography, wikis, Twitter, and Flickr has us responding to the demands of students for on-line video recordings of their classes. Things are changing very quickly and there are some reservations by instructors because they perceive that videocasting has eaten into class attendance. Despite the reservations of instructors, many students appear to be enamored with the video offerings and use them to clarify concepts that may have been missed in class or as another source of material to study for exams."

Professor Jaime Diaz, Professor of Psychology, also presented about the use of technology in his classes. Professor Diaz surveyed his students and determined that 76% of learning occurs outside of classroom. He was very enthusiastic about the results of using podcasting in his class, and was very interested in our new video screen-casting system, developed using open source software.

What seems to have been lost in all the hype about podcasting is that our pilots – yes, pilots with an "s" – were about utilizing New Media in the educational environment. In October 2005, we also started an on-demand video pilot. If you think that the podcasting download numbers are impressive, consider the fact that 17 classes were video recorded and resulted in 47,684 downloads though Winter Quarter, 2007. From the very beginning, we sensed that video would be the favored New Media. And then came YouTube which had the effect of hitting the reset button on how everyone viewed the impact and utility of on-line video. While everyone was distracted by the buzz-factor of both podcasting and on-line video, we were perfecting our automated video capture system. And we’ve further developed this into an automated ScreenCasting system that combines high resolution video screen captures, traditional video recordings and spoken narration. The result is an end-product that conveys complex information and concepts easily and quickly – something that has been essential for the students in the biology class where we have been perfecting the technology over the past quarter.

Tim Batzel and I met with Alex Castro, CEO of a local startup called Pluggd. We were particularly interested in learning about Pluggd’s “HearHere” technology which allows users to search for specific content within audio or video files. This allows you to jump to the topics you are most interested in hearing within a podcast and vidcast. What Google did for searching web documents, Pluggd is doing for audio and video.

Why is this relevant to educational technology? 73% of students reported listening to portions of the class podcasts multiple times in UW’s 2006 evaluation of current podcasting use. Imagine how much time would be saved if you could quickly jump to the portions of a class podcast that you needed to review. In contrast, imagine how arduous of a task it would be to sift through 10 weeks of podcasts to help you study for a final exam. Pluggd’s technology would have a very positive impact on the usability of educational podcasts – especially when we consider that many students use class podcasts to prepare for homework and exams, or to clarify concepts discussed in class.

Alex explained to us how their servers are constantly crawling the web and sifting through audio and video files to perform speech-to-text analysis. We are not talking about "Dragon NaturallySpeaking" here. We are talking about some serious department of defense- quality stuff running on Intel’s latest and greatest processing power. Another process tracks associations between words by looking at the results of the speech-to-text analysis and finding words that frequently appear in the same contexts. And if that weren’t enough, they also devour innumerable amounts of text web pages to build further word associations.

All this works to find related concepts appearing around the search terms that a user enters when trying to find content of interest within podcasts. The results are then displayed on the file’s timeline which is coded for relevance like a heat-map. The sections of the file that are related to the search term appear in red; click on red and you’d theoretically be listening to the details you missed on “elasticity of demand” in Professor Smith’s economics podcast.

I say theoretically because most of UW’s on-demand audio RSS feeds are hidden behind layers of security that prevent crawling and consumption by the general public.

I attended a Spark Session about the Wireless Campus, hosted in Kane Hall today. The session began with an introduction to the wireless networks on the UW campus. Scott Mah, Assistant Vice President from Computing & Communications, explained how wireless Internet access actually works, its reach, and its limitations. Next, Cara Lane, Research Scientist with Catalyst Research & Development, presented an overview of faculty and student attitudes and habits regarding wireless network use, drawing upon data from the 2005 UW Instructor and Student Educational Technology Surveys.

After Cara's presentation, a panel comprised of Mike Eisenberg, Taso Lagos, Ana Larson and Christopher Blair discussed the benefits and challenges of teaching and learning in a wireless classroom. The event was recorded using CSSITG's automated podcasting system and can be listened to here.

I just finished reading the November 2006 Pew Internet Project Data Memo, which found that 12% of Internet users have downloaded a podcast. The survey also found that just 1% report downloading a podcast on a typical day. Podcasting hasn't exactly slain the radio and TV dragons yet, but the range of content available has exploded over the past two years. Numerous mainstream media institutions now provide podcasts, National Public Radio being one of the early adopters. Podcasting is changing the paradigm for broadcasters and print media and there is even speculation that it poses a threat to the survival of satellite radio.

Last week, a consortium of seven newspaper chains representing 176 daily papers across the country announced a broad partnership with Yahoo to share content, advertising and technology. I think this confirms the paradigm shift away from traditional delivery mechanisms, now that we are tethered to computers, portable mp3 players and telephones for much of our day. I have been a big proponent of expanding the role of phones, or as Nokia likes to say, "multimedia computers." If I could lose the big clunky box and monitor that keep me chained to my desk, I'd be grateful. And that is why I am further intrigued by the news that YouTube is working with Verizon Wireless to bring "VCast" to mobile phones. YouTube will be making a phone-based version of its user-generated video-clip phenomenon to a phone near you. It just one more step towards true mobility. Of course, there is a $15-a-month subscription fee charged by Verizon Wireless -- but hey, "freedom" has really never been free.

Sara Gorelick, Newhouse graduate student from Syracuse University in the Magazine, Newspaper and Online Program, recently contacted Classroom Support Services to interview us about podcasting for a project she was working on. I thought the questions and answers might be of interest to people who are interested in podcasting in the university environment:

Sara Gorelick: When did you start the podcasting and why?

David Aldrich: We started podcasting on October 5, 2005 -- Autumn quarter. I'd like to claim that we were some kind of visionaries and took educational technology to new places. the reality is that we started podcasting as a practical response to a problem. The library was devoting equipment and valuable real estate -- you know, space -- for students to come and listen to class lectures recorded on cassette tapes. This was also inconvenient for students because of access issues. The library is not always open, and if you miss classes because you've got the flu, you have a lot of catch up work to do. We thought podcasting would address these issues and give students anywhere anytime access to lecture recordings.

Sara Gorelick: How does it work (for someone who knows nothing about computers..like me!)

David Aldrich: We knew that instructors didn't need to juggle another piece of technology, so we designed the podcasting system to be completely automated. The professor shows up, she lectures and she leaves. Two minutes later her lecture appears on the web and it is available to the students. There is equipment in the room that is scheduled to turn on at the beginning of the class, and it turns off at the end. This is all done with scripting, including the posting of the lectures to the web.

Sara Gorelick: Has it been successful?

David Aldrich: Very much so. We've had more than 50,000 downloads of the lectures since the pilot project began.

Sara Gorelick: Would you reccommend it to other large campuses?

David Aldrich: Absolutely. Students are what I would classify as "digital natives" and I believe we should be providing material to them where they want to consume it -- and that is often on their turf and on their time schedule.

Sara Gorelick: Does it cost the school anything?

David Aldrich: The costs are minimal. Our hardware costs for outfitting ten rooms for the pilot were about $10,000. There is a labor cost associated with this as well, but we made the process very efficient, so that cost is pretty minimal.

Sara Gorelick: Do you see this becoming more common in time?

David Aldrich: Yes. I recently attended the Podcast and Portable Media Exposition in Ontario California -- the various educators present were all very jazzed about podcasting and its application in the educational environment. And surprisingly, corporations are extremely interested in podcasting as a way to develop a one-on-one relationship with their customers, or to reach niche market demographics. Think about it -- Whirlpool is producing an American Family Podcast Series, and Speedo, the swim suit manufacturer, is podcasting about the world of swimming. That is amazing.

This is the second session I am writing about at the Portable Media Expo in Ontario, California. The "Creating Killer Podcasts" panel discussion consisted of Bill Kirkos (Intel), John Furrier (CEO podtech), Robert Scoble (the notorious and well known A-list blogger), and Jeff Knowland (SAP).

There was a common theme that seemed to resonate with all of the speakers at this panel discussion: Blogging, Podcasting and Wikis. And these tools appear to be providing a more powerful means of informing, influencing and persuading customers/stakeholders than traditional marketing, advertising and corporate communications.

Microsoft’s Channel 9, for example, features interviews with Microsoft developers about their products, a forum to discuss the videos and a wiki. Robert Scoble said that he started working on the Channel 9 video project because “he was sick of being marketed to by committees producing ads that don’t tell you anything.” Why not sit down with an engineer and ask, “What does this thing do?” Spending 30 minutes doing this would answer far more questions compared to being subjected to some formalized, committee-based ad-agency-produced commercial.

Did it work? The channel 9 podcasts were being were getting 4.3 million visitors a month when Robert was still working there, and this traffic was all being generated by word of mouth referrals – linking via blogs, and the general internet buzz.

Scoble’s biggest surprise about the impact of this project were seen is surveys on College recruiting: Channel 9 videos we the number one most referred to item by college recruits as changing the way they thought about Microsoft. “That seems like a cool company to join and I thought it was an evil borg-like company, but now I can see they are a smart people there and I want to work with them…”

With RSS, a company has a direct connection to the people who want to read your stuff. John Furrier, CEO podtech, said that it’s not just the content, it’s the subscription capability to that content that makes RSS so powerful. There is a large audience of stakeholders that are interested in what you are doing and they want to be notified when you have something to tell them. RSS is a core enabler of this type of communication.

RSS seems underutilized – simply being used as a feed for your aggregator to harvest articles. Bill Kirkos of Intel spoke about expanding the uses of RSS to include things such as the distribution of discounts on a slow business day to drum up sales, or communicating children’s grades to their parents as they are entered by the teacher.

Kirkos said that the over-arching belief that Intel has is that RSS represents an inflection point – an inflection point being a time in the life of a business when its fundamentals are about to change. Andy Grove, the founder of Intel, wrote about his book entitled Only the Paranoid Survive:

"Strategic inflection points can be caused by technological change but they are more than technological change... They are full-scale changes in the way business is conducted, so that simply adopting new technology or fighting the competition as you used to may be insufficient. They build up force so insidiously that you may have a hard time even putting a finger on what has changed, yet you know that something has. Let's not mince words: A strategic inflection point can be deadly when unattended to."

I have to agree that RSS and other tools such as blogging and podcasting appear to represent an inflection point that will change the market and the way that business will interact with its customers.

I am attending the Podcast and Portable Media Expo in Ontario, California today. The first session I am going to write about concerns Podcasting for Print Publications.

Print publications are experimenting with new ways to reach their audience. Curt Brandao, Universal Press Syndicate columnist, stressed that the first impression of your outfit, your business, is what people see on the internet. With people interested in traffic reports for their morning commute, or looking to buy movie tickets from the comfort of their chair, the first source of news, entertainment and services is often through the Web. The probable order of source selection for information is Internet, TV, radio, and finally, newspaper.

Marcus Chan, San Francisco Chronicle technology editor, started podcasting on behalf of his paper without asking or even telling them about it. He realized that those in print media needed an edge, given the competition in the news business -- especially in light of an apparently shrinking print media audience. Blogging software was one piece of technology that expedited news delivery to the web that he spoke about; Reporters can now directly post stories for the paper. Marcus also spoke about how podcasting allows the paper to reach niche audiences that were nearly impossible to contact in the past. For example, there were no reporters assigned to cover the Filipino demographic, so pinoy.pod was created to offer podcasts about stories of the Filipino experience. Other Chronical podcasts can be sampled here.

One of the most fascinating concepts that Marcus mentioned were “Open Mic” podcasts which would allow content generation by readers/listeners. He had no idea where that idea might lead, but I thought it might be an interesting idea to explore at the University of Washington.

ABSTRACT

A scalable podcast solution developed at the University of Washington makes the podcasting of class lectures easy for faculty by automating the capture, uploading, and delivery of MP3 audio recordings.
University of Washington staff create online class blog-space for participating instructors at the beginning of the quarter. Class location and meeting times are scheduled via a web interface. After the schedule has been established, the entire recording process happens seamlessly in the background while the instructor teaches.

A podcast server automatically captures data from networked MP3 streaming devices, which are wired into the classroom's PA system. The audio capture routine stops at the end of class and the resulting MP3 file is scripted to be published in a corresponding class blog where it is made available to students via an RSS feed.

Students are able to listen to the MP3 recordings online, or they can click on the provided link to subscribe to the podcast. Once students subscribe to a podcast, subsequent lectures are delivered automatically to the students' computers. These recordings can be played on personal computers, laptops, portable MP3 players, and some cell phones.

This convenient teaching and learning technology provides students with the ability to engage in lecture review and enhance their understanding of the material covered in class. The University's scalable podcasting solution helps to create the links between teaching and learning, and expands the boundaries of the traditional classroom.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee.

SIGUCCS’06, November 5-8, 2006, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
Copyright 2005 ACM 1-59593-173-2/05/0011…$5.00.

1. INTRODUCTION

For over 20 years, classes at the University of Washington have been audio taped -- a process which had faculty and staff members using tape recorders placed in classrooms to record lectures, and then having to make multiple copies of those tapes for distribution to students at the Odegaard Media Center. In addition to this process being labor intensive and time consuming, listening equipment in the Media Center had exceeded its useful life. Students were unhappy with both the quality of the lecture recordings and the limitations on access to the Media Center.

In late summer 2005, an ad hoc group of staff and students from Classroom Support Services, the Office of Learning Technologies, UW Libraries, and Computing & Communications assembled to discuss new and emerging technologies that would address these issues.

2. DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS

Classroom Support Services' Information Technology Group listed the following as critical factors to consider for the pilot program design:

• Resources for the pilot would be limited.
• Large lecture classes would be targeted.
• Rooms require PA systems and network connectivity.
• Automated lecture capture would be the key to success.
• Automated posting of audio lecture content and subsequent generation of RSS feeds would be highly desirable.
• Scheduling of recordings, configuration of devices, and other management tasks would need to be centralized so that the solution could scale to any number of classrooms.
• Class lecture recordings should be easy to find and easy to subscribe to.
• The program must address the idea that many students live in a TiVo culture.
• The program must strive to create learning opportunities that expand the traditional boundaries of the classroom and of the media center.

2.1 Final Design

The University of Washington implemented a podcasting pilot program that began in Fall Quarter 2005 and gave students "any time, anywhere" options for reviewing those formerly analog recordings. The final podcasting pilot design uses Barix Instreamers as capture and encoding devices and a Debian Linux server for storage and publishing of digital audio files to a Classroom Portal. The Classroom Portal is an interactive blog that allows integration of course materials, such as links to other web-based materials. Any student, faculty, staff, or alumni with a valid UW NetID can access the digital lecture recordings from a computer with an Internet connection. Students are able to subscribe to their designated class blog's RSS feed, which then automatically downloads each new lecture to their computers as they become available. The recording, encoding, and publishing process is fully automated with a simple shell script.

The pilot grew from three courses in Fall 2005 to 20 courses in Spring 2006. At the start of Spring Quarter 2006, the pilot was extended to Health Sciences. By the middle of Spring Quarter 2006, the podcast lectures had been accessed over 50,000 times. The service has been such a success that the Odegaard Media Center has since announced that they will no longer support analog audio recordings of courses.

2.2 How it all works

A key component of our podcasting solution is a device called a Barix Instreamer. The Instreamer is an inexpensive hardware device that provides reliable distribution of audio over a standard IP network. The Instreamer converts analog and digital audio into MP3 files which are then transmitted to a streaming server. This small, durable, low-power device has no fans or moving parts and eliminates the need to dedicate a computer solely to streaming.
In our system, the Instreamer is connected to the audio output on the PA rack. The Instreamer sends an MP3 audio stream via HTTP to our podcasting server, which can record the stream to a file. One Instreamer is required for each classroom, but one podcasting server can handle over 50 Instreamers.
The process of recording a class is as follows (see Figure 1):

1. Shortly before classes begin, each participating class is entered into our scheduling system. The class name, meeting days, location, start time, and duration are required.
2. A blog with an integrated RSS feed is created for the class.
All of the next steps are performed automatically by the podcasting server.
3. At the designated times, the podcasting server connects to the Instreamer and begins recording the MP3 stream to disc.
4. At the end of a class, the podcasting server stops recording.
5. Post-processing is done to the captured file. Post-processing tasks includes error-checking, re-encoding to a lower bit rate, and adding ID3 tags to the file.
6. Links to the finished MP3 file are added to the class blog via an XML-RPC request.
From the Classroom Portal, students can listen to the recordings directly on-line, or subscribe to the RSS feed for their class’s blog. Once subscribed to the podcast / RSS feed, students will automatically receive the latest lecture after it has been posted. Recordings are typically available one to two minutes after the end of class.




3. CLASSES

The initial podcasting pilot program, in Fall Quarter 2005, was offered in Kane Hall, which houses the main office of the University's Classroom Support Services, and two large lecture halls were outfitted for automated podcasting. Podcasting was offered to anyone teaching in those select rooms, although only three large freshmen-level survey classes opted in.
The number of rooms outfitted for automated podcasting was expanded prior to Winter Quarter 2006. During this second quarter of the podcasting pilot program, twelve classes were participating in the pilot program in eight different rooms on campus. Most of these classes still had large student populations, although it is worth noting that some sophomore level courses had signed up for the pilot program.
In Spring Quarter 2006, the pilot program grew to twenty classes in twelve different rooms, including two rooms in the Health Sciences section of campus. This quarter marked the addition of smaller classes (under 30 students), two Health Sciences classes, and both a senior and graduate level course.
There is no restriction on class size or on class standing, although large survey courses appear to be the most compatible class type for our automated podcasting solution.

4. EVALUATION

One important factor in judging the success of the podcasting pilot was to gather survey and objective use data to determine how podcasts were being used by students and whether podcasts might be enhancing student learning. Students from classes in the Fall 2005 Podcasting Pilot were asked to participate in a survey. The survey queried students about the benefits and drawbacks of using podcasting in large lecture courses and asked other questions about how the students were using podcasts.
In January 2006, Cara Lane, PhD, a Research Scientist at the University of Washington, authored a report titled, "Podcasting at the UW: An Evaluation of Current Use." The report analyzes responses from one of the participating courses. The following is an excerpt:
In both multiple-choice and open-ended questions, we asked students to identify the aspects of podcasting that supported their learning.… The top choices that students selected were that listening to the podcasts helped them catch up when they missed class and helped them prepare for homework and exams. The comments students made in response to open-ended questions expanded on these points. Students not only discussed the general usefulness of podcasts as study aids, but also provided specific details on how they used the podcasts to clarify materials covered in lectures, enhancing their comprehension of complex concepts. Students also used the podcasts to fill in gaps in their notes. These patterns are consistent with many students’ tendencies, discussed earlier, to focus their listening on portions of the podcasts. These patterns indicate that the primary benefit of podcasting is its ability to provide repeat access to lectures. This attribute benefits all students who access the podcasts, not only those that miss a class.
The complete white paper can be viewed at the following web location: http://catalyst.washington.edu/projects/podcasting_report.pdf

During Winter and Spring Quarters 2006, students completed more extensive surveys. Instructors also were asked to participate in a survey at the end of Spring Quarter 2006. Students consistently stated the following with regard to whether course podcast support enhanced their learning:

• It was a convenient way to access course materials.
• It helped me catch up when I missed class.
• It helped me prepare for homework and exams.
• It clarified concepts discussed in class.

One student said, in response to a question about the greatest strength of podcasting, "In big lecture classes it is difficult to ask questions or for clarification, with podcasts you can relisten to parts that you didn't understand. Also, I have trouble focusing on everything the teacher says during class and I may fall behind in a lecture or miss what she is talking about. With podcasts you can go at your own pace on your own time."

Similarly, from the instructor survey, one participant responded, "The greatest strength is to allow students to learn even if they have to miss class. With a class that meets five times a week, it's a bit oppressive for college students. I think tied with this advantage is allowing students to listen to lectures again if they were uncertain about content or did not take adequate notes."

5. CONCLUSION

Podcasting has been one of the simplest teaching and learning technologies to implement at the University of Washington and one of the most immediately adopted by students who are engaged in the learning process. The technology is easy for students to use and requires minimal support. In fact, in our experience so far, almost all support questions have been answered by on-line tutorials and FAQs. The automated podcast solution developed at the University of Washington makes the podcasting of class lectures easy for faculty by automating the capture, uploading, and delivery of MP3 audio recordings. This solution is cost effective for large lecture classes, which typically have high quality sound systems that can easily be tapped into, and it is scalable. Expanding the boundaries of the traditional classroom by providing convenient access to anytime, anywhere, course materials helps students catch up on missed classes, prepare for homework and exams, and clarify concepts discussed in classes.

While the current University of Washington implementation has been successful on many levels, it has not fully taken advantage of one of the key benefits podcasting offers: mobility. Our survey data indicates that despite the fact that most students own an MP3 player, the majority choose to listen to recordings on their personal computers rather than transfer recordings to their MP3 players. This, of course, takes the "pod" out of podcasting. A smaller majority choose to either download or listen to content directly from the web without subscribing to the corresponding RSS feed, thereby removing the "casting" part as well. So much for podcasting, as we thought we understood it. We predict that the benefits of mobility in podcasting will not be realized until mobile consumption and production of information becomes more mainstream. We are seeing such trends taking hold with the development of mobile blogging, which is made possible by the convergence of audio, photo, video, and Internet access features that appear in most modern cell phones. However, while future improvements in podcasting may come from more flexible and more mobile approaches to audio distribution -- especially with the development of newer, smaller and more feature-rich mobile devices -- on-demand streaming of podcast content may remain the primary method of content acquisition in the university environment.

David Aldrich
University of Washington
Box 353095
daldrich@u.washington.edu

Bradley Bell
University of Washington
Box 353095
bradleyb@u.washington.edu

Tim Batzel
University of Washington
Box 353095
tbatzel@u.washington.edu

According to WildVoice Studio's product literature:

"With WildVoice Studio, a microphone, and headphones, it's easy to:

• Record a Podcast
• Incorporate music, interviews, or other pre-recorded audio clips into your Podcast
• Incorporate sound effects to make your Podcast interesting
• Perform basic editing to create a more professional Podcast
• Publish your finished Podcast in MP3 format and then upload it onto a website

Using WildVoice Studio, you can record a show in clips, mixing in music and sound effects as you talk. When you're done, you can split or cut out any parts of your recorded show that you don't like. WildVoice Studio then merges or publishes your clips into a finished show in an MP3 format that can be uploaded at WildVoice.com or any other site that supports audio files."

We will test this software for potential use in an educational environment.