Podcasting and Education

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Interview

Podcasting and Education

A conversation with Rice University's Jeffrey Daniel Frey

1/16/2008

By Linda L Briggs

But again, technology for the sake of technology is not a good thing to do. What's the story you're telling? Is it for faculty? Is it for staff? What's the meat of your presentation?

Some people put together a podcast plan and say, we want to do this, then realize that a podcast isn't the best way to push it out there. And even if you are doing a podcast, it definitely should be transcribed. If you're doing a video, you might want to do audio as well because that's easy to pick up. There are different ways to disseminate the information to reach a broader audience.

CT: So it goes back to one of the basic rules about Web sites: it's really about content, not the medium.

JDF: Yes, know your audience, and start with the content. That's what we tell people when we're building a web site for them. Once we know that, we can figure out what the architecture should be around the content, then we can figure out what the delivery method for that content is.

CT: Back to your comment on recruiting, which I think is an interesting observation: Do podcasts enhance recruiting efforts because they say, here's a university that clearly knows and uses technology well? Or is it the actual information the podcasts contain?

JDF: I think it's a little bit of both. I think that a podcast can give a more real sense of what it's like to be at the university. Some people can't visit every prospective school… so interesting to go to a Web site and actually get an experience of what it might be like there. When you hear a podcast with an actual faculty member's voice, or you see a video in which you're actually in a classroom, or you're touring the campus… If you can watch a video like that, it makes you feel a little more connected to the university. You can say, now I understand more what their classes look like, or what their students are like, or their professors.

CT: What's the top tip you can offer to an individual educator who wants to start podcasting?

JDF: If you can get past the "why"--why am I doing this and who is my audience--then you get to the technology. My number one tip is, do the best you can with the technology… Invest in the technology and the editing, so you can put out something that's of high quality. And it doesn't take much. Fro under $100 you can get a really good mic that plugs into a computer. There's free software to do the editing. I have information on my blog on podcasting technologies. For a small investment, you can push something out there that's really good.

So my tip would be this: Invest in the technology so you can put out the highest quality product that you can, whatever that is. Just do it. It's not hard. It's easy stuff.

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Linda L. Briggs is a freelance writer based in San Diego, Calif.