The Power of Podcasting
This new technology is revolutionizing the way faculty and administrators interact with students
By Lydia Lum
Most years in Dr. Kevin M. Gaugler’s Spanish civilization class, the students were so focused on note-taking that they rarely uttered a word. Then last fall, he decided to do something a little bit different. He started podcasting his lectures, which are in Spanish, hoping to take pressure off his students.
Before long, his once silent class was erupting into lively discussion on Spanish literature, geography or Spain’s civil war. “Once I offered the podcasts, class time stopped being so one-way,” says Gaugler, an assistant professor at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. “Students began commenting on what they’d read. There was a more active type of learning, and their vocabulary and spelling improved.”
All over the country, college faculty and administrators are plugging themselves into one of the newest — and hottest — technologies in an effort to better connect with students. Although it’s easy to understand why many people mistakenly believe podcasts are strictly associated with Apple’s wildly popular iPod, they are actually homespun broadcasts that can be listened to on any portable digital music player, including iPod. The podcasts can also be accessed on any computer with audio and video downloading capabilities. Podcasting’s syndicated audio feed makes for a greatly simplified delivery system. While the word “podcast” certainly works to iPod’s advantage, some pioneers of the medium insist the term should stand for “personal-on-demand” or “personal option digital.” Podcasts can be automatically routed through cyberspace to subscribers’ personal media devices and consumed at their leisure, like a digital audio version of hard-copy magazines. And like magazines, podcasts can be shared and swapped over and over again. But unlike magazines, podcasts don’t require any physical space, making the medium even more appealing.
