Wisconsin Union Blend

Okay, am I missing something here? Help me.

What’s the value of a website that shows “the most popular and best videos” on YouTube? And why do you need a site to do this for you when YouTube allows you to sort by popularity?

I see there’s also a ‘Best of YouTube’ podcast in the iTunes Store.

Umm…hmm.

Recut, Reframe, Recycle: Quoting Copyrighted Material in User-Generated Video is a new report by The Center for Social Media making the case for fair use consideration for mashups that make use of copyrighted materials.

Also of interest, the “Researcher’s Top Five Videos in Each Category” which you’ll find down near the bottom of the page, near their link to an “extensive database of videos” used by the researchers (in excel).

I read this article on the ‘Future of Educational Video’ off StreamingMedia.com in which the author (Paul Riismandel) wonders what makes for acceptable quality when students create digital content. He draws a nice parallel with writing when he says:

“…holding average students to broadcast quality standards is as absurd as expecting them to write like Maya Angelou or Stephen King. I expect a broadcast journalism student to crank out video worthy of local TV news, just as I would expect a creative writing student to write well enough for a literary magazine. But it’s absurd to expect either of them to change places.”

Lest you think the author doesn’t care about quality, he later writes:

“Quality does matter. A student should never have to strain to understand her teacher’s podcast, and a professor should never have to squint to see what’s in a student’s video. Quality means that the audio or video never detracts from the actual content it contains. Unless the ability to produce video is the point of the assignment, the medium otherwise should be transparent, letting the ideas shine through.”

I couldn’t agree more. I hate the idea that faculty and students would hold back from creating digital video or audio stories simply because they worry that the quality isn’t of a professional level. The transparent media production he talks about is easily achievable and doesn’t require fancy equipment or high-end studios. A little on lighting. A little on framing. And a little on recording audio. I think that would do it.

Maybe showing instructors how this is possible would be a good workshop?

On his Learning and Innovation blog, Cole Camplese has put together a compelling picture of the growing campus Eco-System for Digital Expression at Penn State University. Camplese shows how academic blogging, podcasting, digital media creation, and other emerging communication and collaboration tools are made possible by a healthy mix of campus IT infrastructure, physical spaces on campus, support resources, and numerous opportunities for instructors, students, and support staff to get to together and talk about instructional technology.

The use of iTunes U. for automatic feed creation has made podcasting very easy and convenient for instructors on our campus. They are very happy with this convenience. Just upload a file and POOF! the feed is updated. In the end, the only indication that the podcast tracks are available via subscription is a very tiny, grey ‘Subscribe’ button.

But we’ve learned through surveys that students are not hitting that button. The reasons are numerous:

1. Students access iTunes U. via our course management system, D2L. They are often in the system for other reasons like taking quizzes, checking grades or writing in discussion boards, so these audio and video files (I won’t call them podcasts) for their courses are never far away. Students figure, “Why do I need to subscribe when the files are just as easy to get to when I’m in D2L?”
2. iTunes U. allows the student to view or listen to the audio and video right off the servers in California. There is no need to download them to the local computer.
3. When you couple #1 and #2 with the fact that the campus has ubiquitous wireless and lots of computer labs spread throughout, students have easy access to their podcasts from pretty much anywhere on campus that has a computer. With such access, there is less need to download the files for viewing at time when you don’t have network access.
4. Students don’t want to put academic podcasts on their iPods if they don’t have to because these materials take up space that could otherwise be used for storing music or videos.
5. Most instructors are not creating materials that leverage or necessitate the portability of an iPod. Some have done audio or video flashcards that allow students to practice/learn in the field or in non-traditional learning environments, but the majority of the content can be consumed at the student’s desktop or laptop.
6. iTunes U. makes the process of feed creation so seamless that the purpose of and technology behind that ‘Subscribe’ button goes unnoticed, unused and unappreciated.
7. Finally, as a learning technology consultant, explaining the value of subscription in this environment is especially challenging. Given everything I just said, instructors wonder, “Now why should students subscribe?” I’ll address how we go about this in a later post.

So while iTunes U. makes “podcasting easier,” the fact that the ‘Subscribe’ button and RSS feed don’t get used means, to me, that this is not podcasting AND we are sacrificing the instructor and students’ understanding of the technology for what is easier and more convenient.

This bothers me.

A characteristic intro sequence that includes your show’s “theme-song” can really improve the overall sound of your podcast. Short music segments can also provide effective transitions between different parts of your show.

But how can you use music without getting sued? Your safest bet is to use “podsafe” music, or music that has been pre-licensed for use in podcasts. Luckily there are a number of great resources out there that make finding podsafe music very easy. I keep a growing list of podsafe music resources here. You’ll also find extensive information on podsafe music and other “sharable” media at creativecommons.org.

Want to see how easy it is? This short tutorial walks you through the process of finding podsafe music at magnatune.com, one of the largest collections of pre-licensed music.

If you want people to subscribe to your podcasts, don’t bury the feed URL too deep within the directory structure of your website. It should be at the homepage of your site or off a ‘podcasts’ page. The feed URL should be short and easy to remember. Something like http://www.yoursite.edu/podcasts/feed.xml.

RSS is a really simple technology that is either misunderstood or not understood at all by many instructors and students in our campus community. We need to do a better job at talking about this technology. This website isn’t going to help with that discussion, but if you’re into RSS then this is a site to check out.

If someone subscribes to your podcast and receives it via their favorite aggregator, then they are less likely to be going back to your website to get information. That’s one of the points of subscription — the information comes to you so you don’t have to continually search it out.

But what if you want to get people coming back to the website AND listening to the podcasts. When recording, just remember to end the podcast with something like “For more information on this and other topics, please see our website at www.someplace.edu.” Very short. Very simple. Very effective.