Thing 15 - How to Use Podcasts in Schools

Podcasting is an area where we (at our Center) have not been able to keep pace with the changing technology - or at least in understanding how to adapt to the changing technology to get video of guest speakers that we have had on the web so that others can use / view them effectively. In 2007-2008 for International Polar year (www.gvsu.edu/ipy) , we taped our lecturers and posted their powerpoints on our website. However, we had to have our IT department upload the video to our website because of the size of the files.

This year for our Fall Science Update, we had Dr. Norman Lederman speak on the Nature of Science. Our conference center had an outside vendor videotape the lecture, but the format that he gave it to us in was unusable on the platforms that we have for posting it to the website; so one of faculty members is working at converting it...but we still don't have it yet in a form that we can post. Needless to say it is frustrating. We know what we want to do; but because of the variety of platforms / software out there and the rapidity with which they change, we can't seem to do what we want or need to do.

Overall, however, I believe our institution is supportive of the technology and it's use in education. GVSU is a part of iTunes University and we do have podcast technology available for our faculty through the University's BlackBoard site. Now all we have to do is figure out how to use it!