Just show me the movie.
As a first assignment I’ve asked students in my Multimedia Design course to define multimedia. Until they’ve had a chance to respond, I’m going to hold off posting on that subject here. The challenge is to try to tease out the real meanings behind the edu-speak so that when we’re dealing with it, we all know what we’re talking about.
The term “podcast” is my soapbox issue du jour.
Educators have appropriated the term to mean something it’s not. When I hear of this or that teacher “making a podcast” and then “uploading it to WhateverBoard,” I cringe. A podcast is not a kind of file. A podcast is not digital audio. It’s not digital video. It’s not a pdf, or a ppt, or anything else that you load to a server to click on to see, hear, or read. A podcast is the process of delivering media via RSS enclosure tag. Period. No RSS, no podcast. Simple. Easy. Done.
Oh, sure, lots of podcasts have “download the episode here” links on their pages, but that’s a convenience factor. No podcaster — no real podcaster — puts up content without a feed.
But educators are using the term podcast to mean any digital file placed on a server for their students to download. There’s no RSS feed. There’s not even an acknowledgment that what they’re doing isn’t new, innovative, or particularly interesting, in most cases. We’ve had the capability to do digital downloads for over a decade now. Most people simply didn’t bother with it.
And here’s the problem with using the term “podcast” for “digital archive” and pretending it’s something new. It cuts you off the whole body of research into the use of media in educational settings. We’ve been studying how media can be used effectively for half a century. Anybody remember the term “audio-visual?”
What’s the diff between 16mm and mp4 from an educational viewpoint? Maybe only how dark you have to have your room in order to see it. And maybe the fact that mp4s can be delivered over the ‘net.
But from the standpoint of the message — the purpose of using that particular article of media to begin with — it’s pretty much the same whether it’s displayed on 16mm film, vhs tape, digital video disk, or mpeg. We need to keep this in mind. The purpose of using media in educational settings it not to use media. It’s to offer a message.
Furthermore, by using the term “podcast” to mean the content and not the delivery mode, we are abandoning the opportunity to explore the potential of RSS delivered media. While the argument that most people don’t understand RSS — or even know that it exists — is undoubtedly true, what it’s not is valid. Most people don’t know what carburation is — or even that it exists — but many people use it, or a product of it, almost every day. The people who are responsible to implement it have a fine understanding, but the people who drive the cars or ride the busses may never realize that it’s a process as well as a product.
The reality here is that RSS is computer code, which means it’s machine readable. That means it can be searched, parsed, filtered, and combined in ways that allow us to create specific content streams which might be tailored for specific use in a particular course or an educational experience. This course, for example, could be pulling from TED, IT Conversations, and a host of other resources to extract specific content pertinent to multimedia design in the classroom. It’s not. I haven’t built the tools to do it yet, and for all of the promise of the various feed merge and filter tools out there, the problem of finding the few specific grains of of sand on this particular beach rests on resolving some meta-data issues. This problem will be solved — or might be solved — should the people who need that functionality the most — educators — start agitating for it.
But as long as “podcast” means “digital archive” and not “delivery channel” then that’s one problem we’re not going to be solving soon.
Which is why terminology is important.
Now, pass the popcorn! I’m going to watch a movie.
Listen to: Multimedia, Schmultimedia
January 12th, 2009 at 9:23 pm
I am not real familiar with podcasts. I can already tell that I am going to learn so much in this class!
January 13th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
I never really got into the creation of podcasts but I always have 20 or more on my iPod. When I think of digital archive, I think more along the lines of YouTube instead. Is that right? I can’t wait to create a podcast of my own.
January 14th, 2009 at 10:56 pm
This is a new definition for “podcast” that I have never heard of before. I have been to several training to teach how to make podcasts too (of course, not all of them were very helpful). I look forward to learning more in this course.
January 14th, 2009 at 11:43 pm
I suspect that the training talked about audio or video production and not about delivery.
The term was coined in Feb, 2004, in an article in the Manchester Guardian (UK) and adopted by the team that developed the first “podcatcher” in September of 2004 as the term they’d used.
I could have wished for almost any other term because we’ve been fighting the “I don’t have an iPod so I can’t listen to podcasts” battle ever since.
So it goes.
January 15th, 2009 at 12:21 pm
I aggrivates me as well to term digital files as podcasts. This term brands downloadable digital files with a company name? Some would feel that they had no access to the files since they have an mp3 player that is made another company. Downloadable archives of mp3, wavs, or whatever should be called just that, “a downloadable mp3 of the whatever content.” Should we furthermore confuse students by having them create digital files and then have them wonder am I podcasting or just recording audio and saving it?
January 15th, 2009 at 12:36 pm
I’m sorry, I don’t understand this point, Jeff.
Podcast is not a company name. The confusion is that most people THINK they need an iPod to listen to a podcast. That’s unfortunate, but irrelevant. I listen to podcasts on my Sansa Fuze without any problems so that’s really an issue of ignorance, not branding.
The problem is using the term podcast to refer to the FILE and not the DELIVERY. The really interesting issue here is that the only population that mis-uses this term in this way is the population of educators.
But confusing students is what teachers do, so don’t take our fun away
January 15th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
The point I was trying to get across is that the term podcast is very similiar to Ipod and many may feel that an Ipod which is a branded item is the only way to access digital media that is referred to as a podcast, which is not the case. I too listen to digital archived programs on the computer, and a Sony Mp3 player and many of those are labled as podcasts. You are right in that there should be a clear difference in the file and the delivery method.
January 15th, 2009 at 1:57 pm
Yea, that’s exacty right. I was just makin’ sure which camp you were in.
January 15th, 2009 at 5:28 pm
I am part of a Mac trial at my school! However, there is a lot of pressure to create things like podcasts, blogs, wikis, video, and more! This would be great—only I do not know how to do all of these things (I am learning)! Thank you for the explanation of a podcast. I was like all the other confused individuals that thought podcast was a reference to the file and not the delivery. And I also thought podcasting was in some way linked to Mac software. I am looking forward to learning how to create a podcast and have been looking at some online recently.
January 19th, 2009 at 10:28 am
I appreciate the clarification. Maybe I am dense but it still feels like grey area to me. I think I’ll look into it some more.
January 23rd, 2009 at 12:11 pm
I too have no idea what a podcast is, but I hope to learn asap!!
January 30th, 2009 at 11:06 pm
I am still a little confused. What exactly is an RSS feed? Would this also be a culture issue in a way? Could the definition of a podcast change based on a certain culture’s beliefs? I could be going way out on a limb or just not getting it.
January 30th, 2009 at 11:43 pm
An RSS feed is what you’re supposed to be putting into your feed reader in order to subscribe to your classmate’s blogs.
This might explain a bit more:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0klgLsSxGsU
No, this isn’t a cultural issue. Cornbread isn’t a pie. The definition of a podcast isn’t based on culture. It’s based on a technological specification.