ETSU has found a way to broaden the reach of education past the boundaries of the classroom. Through the use of podcasting, students can download course-related media, such as recorded lectures, to their computers and then save them in any MP3 player or burn them on a CD for learning on the run.
Podcasting is a way to send files, such as audio or video programs, over the Internet. What sets it apart from other ways of sharing digital media is its ability to auto-matically download upgrades.
When a person uses a podcatching program, like Apple’s iTunes for example, to subscribe to a certain show, it automatically downloads new episodes as they become available.
At the Academic Techno-logy Support office at ETSU, Jim Currie and Brandon Ballentine are working with instructors to teach them how to use podcasting to enhance teaching methods.
“It’s so convenient,” Currie said, “A student can subscribe to every course he’s enrolled in, and when a new lecture is available, it’s automatically downloaded to his hard drive.”
Blake Snider is using podcasting in his graduate-level research methods course in human development to help students study. By subscribing through Blackboard, students can download audio files of the class lectures.
“The true test of whether this is effective or not will be after exams,” he said, “But we are optimistic and hopeful.”
Thomas Holmes is planning to use the technology in a different way for his undergraduate British litera-ture class.
“I intend to read passages and poetry aloud to help students understand the material better,” he said, “Some of the works, such as Hopkins’ poetry, will make much more sense to students as they hear it.”
ATS’s plans for podcasting are slightly different. “We’re star-ting a premier podcast program at the university,” Ballentine said, “We’ve taken five podcasts that we feel show unique qualities about ETSU, on topics such as academic affairs, NASCAR, digital media, bluegrass and storytelling and put them on one site so students can subscribe to them.”
These podcasts will soon be available for subscription at www.etsu.edu/podcast.
And soon, ETSU will join schools like Stanford, Berkeley and Duke as an iTunes University.
ETSU expects equipment to arrive soon from Apple to help set up one site for all of the university’s podcasts. On the site a student will be able to click on a specific department and then be able to subscribe to a class within that department to receive the podcasts for the class.
“We will definitely have the iTunes University set up by next semester, but we hope it will be much sooner,” Ballentine said.

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