OUseful Info

So Just What is a Podcast (or a Blog)...?

JISC are running an online conference at the moment - Innovating e-Learning 2007: Institutional Transformation and Supporting Lifelong Learning (where there are some interesting discussions going on - check it out if you can...)

Today's keynote is delivered via "a podcast", with a transcript also available:

Hmmm.... podcast...?

Looking at the above screenshot, the implied definition of "podcast" can only be something along the lines of "audio embedded in a web page playable via an embedded audio player".

(And not even a very good audio player at that. You have no idea where you are in the audio file, how long it lasts, no freedom to select a point 3 minutes and 27 seconds in etc.)

Whenever I hear the word podcast (just like whenever I hear the word blog) I assume a couple of things:

- that content is regularly published from that site;
- that I can subscribe to that content via an RSS/Atom feed.

In the case of podcasts, this feed can be used to syndicate content to my feed reader, or as a way of providing subscription based downloads to a client I synch with my MP3 player.

For a one off event like a conference, I'd probably even relax the "regularly published" constraint, and just go with the "made available via RSS" requirement.

The JISC online conference keynote "podcast" doesn't offer a feed - indeed, it doesn't offer the typical user any way of downloading an MP3 file of the audio. Not that you'd necessarily want to, in this context.

(Andy Powell also muttered about the discussion threading...)

I (and others) noticed something similar (in respect of language (mis)use) at the OU CTSS conference a couple of months ago, though that time with respect to the word blog. In particular, it seemed as if the word was being used to mean "web page that I published without support", though some speakers did go so far as to mean "a web page where someone in authority will make very occasional posts, asking you, dear reader, a question, and then you can comment on the post."

But that was about it... Subscription didn't figure... Maybe that's because the Wikipedia entry for blog doesn't mention subscription, or syndication, or RSS, although it does highlight the "ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format [as] an important part of many blogs."

(Wikipedia does seem to expect feed based subscription for podcasts, though, although not a requirement for in-page embedded audio players...: "A podcast is a digital media file, or a series of such files, that is distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds for playback on portable media players and personal computers." [Wikipedia: podcast])

For me, subscription is a defining characteristic of the sorts of publishing I think of as blogs'n'podcasts (though maybe I need to rethink in light of received wisdom as exemplified by Wikipedia? Or maybe I should go in and propose a change to the Wikipedia definition...?). What subscription means to me is that even though I can keep getting content updates from the blog or podcast, I never have to visit the site again...

In the sense of syndication, it also means I can choose where I consume the content: a Bloglines or Google Reader river of news client, a PageFlakes or Netvibes dashboard (like my demo Institutional Dashboard Using Pageflakes), via my customised Moodle sidebar (or here), etc.

Blogs as reflective journals seems to be the way the term is used (in the OU at least) for student based activity. Blogs as places where a position can be stated and readers can comment on it (e.g. as a consultation tool, maybe?) seems to be the way blogs are interpreted here for internal administrative use. Blogs as publishing vehicles that support feed based subscription and syndication doesn't seem to be widely recognised, as yet...

Posted by ajh59 at June 13, 2007 10:20 AM