"Podcasting" is the word most frequently used by educators today when writing about or discussing the evolution of digital audio. This is an obvious outgrowth of Apple Computer’s 2001 launch of its iPod products and the iTunes web-based tool and subscription service. While iPod usage has become pervasive among students today, there are plenty of other hand-held audio devices and related audio software that are viable alternatives to the iPod.

Similar to the word "Jacuzzi," which is really a brand-name that has come to mean any hot-water tub with pulsating jets, podcasting has come to mean anything related to creating and publishing digital audio files online that can be transferred to a hand-held device.

Shopping for the right tools to create and listen to podcasts can give you a headache. Learning about what kind of hardware and software you should have if you want to create and publish high quality podcasts can give you an even bigger headache. Regardless, podcasting for educational purposes is alive and well primarily because this technology has greatly reduced the cost to produce high quality audio presentations and make them ubiquitous online.

"Although a picture is worth a thousand words, audio is an incredible, powerful tool now with ease of production and ease of dissemination," says John Ittelson, audio expert and professor of telecommunications, multi-media, & applied computing at California State University Monterey Bay. "Audio is obviously a very effective way to convey information. For example, it lets you display emotions better than the written word."

If you’re thinking about adding some form of podcasting to your courses, you can start with the following suggested short reading list:

Gardner Campbell, "There’s Something in the Air: Podcasting in Education," EDUCAUSE Review, November/December 2005  - Campbell sets the stage with a fictitious female student starting out her day by listening to a variety of course audio feeds (lectures, excerpts from assigned readings, group presentations from various assignments, etc.) through an iTunes interface on her laptop in her room. As she gets ready for a typical day on any college campus, she quickly and easily downloads a number of important education-related audio feeds to her iPod that she can carry with her and listen to (with ear buds that do not block out ambient sound) while walking between classes.

Campbell explains that while streaming audio is really nothing new in the history of the World Wide Web, what makes podcasting so compelling is how relatively easy podcasts can be made, published, and accessed on the go. Still, there are some basic technical issues that podcasters should be aware of, including "sampling rates (higher is usually better), compression formats (the major players are MP3, windows Media Audio or WMA, and Apple’s Advanced Audio Coding or AAC), and compression bitrates (higher is usually better)." He adds that, when creating podcasts, "for the sake of elegance and good bandwidth stewardship, it’s good to try to hit the sweet spot where moderate file size meets pleasing audio quality."

Overall, Campbell provides a thorough overview on podcasting with links to a wide variety of resources in this must-read, extremely well-written, easy-to-understand and entertaining EDUCAUSE piece.

Peter Meng, "Podcasting & Vodcasting: Definitions, Discussions & Implications," University of Missouri, March 2005, - This is a straight-forward, concise white paper that outlines, in general, the processes, tools, equipment, required skills, and implications of podcasting and vodcasting (video broadcasts for playing on a mobile hand-held device). The implications section covers potential uses, effects on infrastructures, pedagogical concerns, and a brief note about the future evolution of these technologies.

University of Minnesota, Office of Information Technology, Digital Media Center, "Podcasting in Education," February 2006  - A three-page document that is an ideal, well-written and succinct hand-out that defines podcasting, covers potential uses and issues and offers links to some sound resources.

Although a relatively small and new initiative, the iPod Experience easily fits under the "rich environment" category. Started during Spring 2005, this digital audio project had its roots in a quick, one-month pilot where students from an anthropology course (Tradition and the Contemporary Experience in Sub-Saharan Africa with Professor Mark Auslander) recorded their impressions of a Brandeis University Women’s Studies Research Center exhibition that featured "Body Map" paintings created by a group of HIV-positive women in South Africa. The students recorded their short impressions (under three minutes) in the Instructional Technology Resource Center using the Center’s recording equipment along with Audacity, which is a free, open-source software for recording and editing sounds. These edited audio files were then posted to a blog as well as pushed out to an RSS feed that was created by Feedburner, a web-based feed management provider used by bloggers, podcasters and commercial publishers. A podcast receiver/media aggregator program, called Juice (similar to iTunes), was used to receive the feed/audio files and allow students to select and download them to their computer as well as load them to an iPod or other digital media player.

The Body Maps project led to a Fall 2005 podcasting initiative in another anthropology course with Auslander, titled "Museums and Public Memory." This time the goal was to record remotely using iPods with Griffin iTalk Voice Recorder attachments (now obsolete) that were purchased by and housed in the Instructional Technology Resource Center. Students borrowed the iPods with iTalk and interviewed residents and historians from a neighborhood in West Medford, Massachusetts, which has one of the oldest Afro-American communities in the United States. These recordings, along with student commentaries, were developed into a podcasted walking tour of this historic neighborhood.

There are a number of other iPod projects happening at Brandeis, but the overall adoption of podcasting for educational purposes has been small. "I’m not sure if it (educational podcasting) will grow," says Brandeis Technology Specialist Janet Hill. "iPods are only one thing," she adds, referring to the growing popularity of wikis and the increasing use of camera phones by students on campus. Hill says that wikis and the latest in cell phone technologies can be used together creatively for educational purposes that might peak the interests of today’s Net Generation.

Nonetheless, the Instructional Technology Resource Center staff is looking at beefing up their digital audio recording services based on the lessons they have learned in the podcasting realm. "We are looking at providing some different devices to other folks on campus interested in recording," says Hill. "Faculty want to do field recordings and interviews, and the iTalk did not record at the best quality. So we are looking at some other digital recording devices that may record better."

"The limitation we had before was with the iPod itself (it was not a 5th generation video iPod nor did it have the optimal microphone and recording adapter - more on this later)," says Brandeis Technology Specialist Todd Hartigan. "It works well if you are doing notes to yourself; you can hear it, you can understand it; it is great for down-and-dirty recording. But I guess I am more of a purist, so I will say that you can get better results." The iPod currently used by Brandeis records only at 16 bit and an 8 kilohertz (kHz) sampling rate (relates to what a microphone captures). Hartigan recommends recording at a 16 bit, 44.1 kHz sampling rate, which is CD sound quality.

To meet this requirement economically and effectively, Hartigan suggests the Olympus WS-310M Voice Recorder, which retails for $129. The WS-310M has a built-in stereo microphone and plugs into any USB port for fast file transfers. It captures Windows Media Audio (WMA) files that would have to be converted to WAV files in order to play on iTunes and on the iPod itself. To convert WMA to WAV, and many other formats, Hartigan suggests using Swift sound file conversion software from NCH Swift Sound, a company headquartered in Canberra, Australia. Cost is only $19.40.

For those who would prefer to use a video iPod with an adapter for recording, Ittelson recommends the new fifth generation video iPod with a Belkin TuneTalk Stereo device, which features two high-quality omnidirectional microphones. (TuneTalk does not work with an iPod Nano, and, as far as I know, there is not a recording adapter on the market for the Nano.) The new video iPod costs $249 for the 30GB model and $349 for the 80GB model; the TuneTalk recording device, which is very compact and plugs into the bottom of the video iPod, costs $69.99. The omnidirectional functionality is great for editing purposes. For example, the interviewer’s questions could be on one track, while the interviewees’ answers could be on another track.

Both the TuneTalk and MicroMemo have a plug in that accepts any 3.55 mm plug microphone. This functionality can apply to those circumstances where the preservation of high fidelity sound is vitally important, such as when educators and students go out into the field to record oral histories or nature sounds that become part of a rich series of resources, like an important, historical library collection.

For important interview-related projects, Ittelson recommends using a Lavalier microphone. Lavaliers are those small microphones that can be clipped onto a lapel, and they screen out ambient sound. (I saw Lavaliers online with a price range starting at about $99 up to $300.) For recording nature sounds, such as birds and frogs, Ittelson recommends a parabolic or shotgun microphone that can pick up sounds from a relatively far distance. A pair of headphones would also be required, so the person recording nature could hear what’s being recorded, as well as aim his or her recording devices accordingly. Parabolics and/or shotguns can range anywhere from $60 to $2,000, says Ittelson.

Back in the 1970s, the cost of equipment for conducting such nature recordings was in the $5,000 to $10,000 range (in 70s dollars), and a backpack was needed to carry it all around. "Now I can carry everything in my pocket," Ittelson adds, referring to an iPod with TuneTalk and a high-end microphone solution. "It provides stereo; it provides high quality audio; it provides convenience; and it provides a direct connection with the most popular tool for media creation today - the iTunes player."