23 Things @ CamMedLib + FollowThat....: Week 11

Monday, 26 July 2010

Week 11 - Podcasts

Thing 17 – Podcasts

What is a podcast?
Podcast is a former word of the month in the Oxford Advanced Learners’ Dictionary.
"a recording of something like a radio programme that you can download from the Internet and play back on your computer or on an MP3 player "

Podcasts take many forms, from short 1-10 minute commentaries to much longer in person interviews or panel group discussions. There’s a podcast out there for just about every interest area and since most podcasts have an RSS feed attached, you can subscribe to podcasts in the same way you subscribe to the RSS feeds way back in week 3.
The best part about this technology is that you don’t have to have an iPod (iPods are just one example of MP3 players) or a MP3 player to access them. Since podcasts use the MP3 file format, a popular compressed format for audio files, you really just need a PC (or portal device) with headphones or a speaker, although if you want to listen to the podcast when you're away from your PC, then of course, you'll need headphones and an MP3 player.

To learn a bit more, try listening to the item below:

Increasingly university lectures are being recorded to be made available as podcasts (our own clinical students have loads of podcasts available to them on ERweb/MedPortal.

Cambridge University, just as it has a YouTube channel, makes podcasts available to the world at large and has its own channel of iTunesU.

This requires that you have iTunes downloaded on your computer in order to listen to the podcasts. If you' unfamiliar with iTunes please come and have a play on my computer (I'll cover your desk while you do so)