Faculty and staff experiment with new type of broadcasting

“Podcasting” is the new buzzword for sending audio over the Internet, and faculty and staff on campus are looking at it as an outreach vehicle and an academic tool.

Although barely a year old, the technology is changing the way people produce and hear audio programs. Just as anyone can create a Web page for the world to read, podcasts allow anyone to record an audio program and broadcast it over the Internet for all who care to listen.

The twist with podcasting is that a software program automatically searches for and downloads broadcasts. The result is a customized play list of music, news and talk radio programs. The broadcasts can be downloaded to a computer or any MP3 player, such as the Apple iPod. With iPods running as small as a pack of gum, listeners can not only choose what they want to hear, they can listen whenever or wherever it is most convenient.

One longstanding UW outreach project has been experimenting with this burgeoning technology. Staff and students at the Sea Grant Institute and the Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies have produced the Earthwatch Radio program since 1972. The two-minute science and environmental programs air on radio stations around the world, and now they’re finding their way to MP3 players as well.

Sea Grant Web developer Rich Dellinger officially launched the Earthwatch Radio podcast in December. Since then, visits to the program’s Web site have been climbing steadily.

“We’ve never seen numbers like this,” says Richard Hoops, the Earthwatch Radio producer at Sea Grant. “We had 1,000 visits to our site during the last week in December; we had 30,000 during the month of April. We’re clearly on to something, and it will be quite interesting to see what that ‘something’ turns into.”

In an academic setting, podcasts could help faculty and staff connect with students. Alan Wolf, a consultant with the Division of Information Technology (DoIT) and the Center for Biology Education, already has worked with a few professors to make their lectures available for download, which is only one step away from podcasting. Students who miss lectures can listen to them later or listen to them again if their notes are unclear.

Wolf says this type of application could be just the beginning. “I don’t see many limits to this technology,” he says. “We’re interested in monitoring podcasting to see how people on campus might want to use it.”