My EFL Blog: Bookmarks

A few links
for the research work

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uses_of_podcasting

http://teflpedia.com/Podcasts_for_students
http://www.shambles.net/pages/learning/EnglishP/eslpodcast/
http://www.edtechnetwork.com/podcasting_vodcasting.html
http://www.teachertube.com/

http://www.apple.com/itunes/podcasts/
http://help.apple.com/garageband/index.html#gbnda19a006d
http://help.apple.com/garageband/index.html#gbnda199f7b6
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_podcatchers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screencast

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog

http://images.yandex.ru/yandsearch?stype=image&lr=77&source=psearch&text=podcasting%20for%20students

http://howtopodcasttutorial.com/what-is-a-podcast

The Podcast Revolution:
You Can Create or Listen to Whatever
Kind of Audio Content You Can Imagine.

Anyone can create a podcast. All over the world, people are creating podcasts on subjects ranging from movies, to technology, to music, to politics and whatever else you can think of. This is new original content made by passionate people who want to share their creativity with the world.

The cost to start podcasting is so low that anyone can do it. Most podcasters are everyday people like you and me. They could be talking to you driving in their car, sitting in their living room or speaking at a conference. You get to glimpse into their life and into their interests.

Podcasters are creating very raw and real content and listeners are responding. Free from corporate radio and broadcast regulations, you can create whatever kind of show you can imagine.

Some podcasts are “talk show” style. Others introduce you to the latest bands and music. With podcasts you can stay current on the news, get a glimpse into someone’s life, listen to move reviews and the list goes on.

Most podcasts are made by people who are very passionate about their subject. Passion is infectious and interesting to listen to. Since the birth of podcasting, a huge variety of shows have shown up on the internet.

In addition, many major media outlets are also now offering podcasts. You can listen to NPR, Rush Limbaugh and many major news outlets by podcast.

Podcast Definition Summary

Now it’s time for your pop quiz. Quit your whining. I promise it’s easy:

1. What are podcasts:

a) A new type of media that puts you in control of what you listen to, when you listen to it and how you listen to it (usually on a computer or portable audio player)
b) An easy way to share your own audio content on the internet with a focused audience
c) A media that can be created with equipment you probably already own, for little cost and in as little as a day
d) A way to become a recognized expert or celebrity in your niche
e) A powerful way to connect with your customers and promote your business to them on regular basis
f) All of the above (you saw that coming)

If you answered ‘f’, then you were right. If you didn’t answer ‘f’, then I’m wondering how you got to this point on the page without even reading about what is a podcast.

Just to top it all off, here is a podcast definition from the Oxford English Dictionary (yes, podcasting is in the dictionary now…how validating):

podcast n. a digital recording of a radio broadcast or similar programme, made available on the Internet for downloading to a personal audio player.

What is a Podcast Aggregator?

To subscribe to a podcast you use a software program called a podcatcher. Sometimes this is also called a podcast aggregator (but again this is geek speak). Just know that podcatcher and aggregator mean the same thing. It’s the software that you use to subscribe to and receive podcasts.

The podcatcher regularly checks the feed for new content that has been posted. When a new podcast show is found, it’s downloaded. The next time you plug your MP3 player into your computer, the new podcasts shows are synced by your media player (such as iTunes).

http://howtopodcasttutorial.com/the-history-of-podcasting

Let’s take a look at the history of podcasting. Obviously podcasting would not be possible without the internet. Since the mid-90s, the internet has evolved at the speed of light. Suddenly the world got smaller and people were exposed to the information super-highway.

It’s the presence of the internet and the personal computer in nearly every home that makes it possible for podcasts to be broadcast worldwide at nearly no cost. You can surf the web and tap into a giant pool of podcast content to download and sync to your MP3 player.

Shortly after the arrival of the internet, weblogs started to appear. You have probably heard weblogs more commonly called blogs. Blogging has become a popular way for people to share their thoughts and rants on the internet in a very casual format. You have probably read a blog or two while surfing the internet whether you realized it or not.

In many ways the blog is the predecessor to podcasting in this history. Over the years blogs have popped up on anything from politics to personal journals. In recent years blogging has earned its status as a very popular and legitimate medium.

Blogs allow anyone to be a social commentator. Anyone can be a journalist. Communicating your thoughts with the world is as easy as the click of a button in a blog. Podcasting was a natural progression from this online forum.

Reading your favorite blogs became easier with the creation of news feed technology, called RSS, by Dave Winer. By subscribing to a blog’s news feed (also called RSS feed), you automatically are notified of and receive new information when it’s posted. A program called a news reader (or aggregator) regularly checks for updates and downloads them to your computer.

The next step in the history of podcasting was audio blogging. The ability to transfer larger pieces of information and faster connection speeds led some bloggers to start audio blogs.

Instead of writing their thoughts, they recorded themselves speaking and posted it to their blogs as an MP3 file. The spoken word added a new personal element to the media of blogging. Some audio blogs naturally evolved in to the first podcasts history.

The problem with audio blogs was that readers had to regularly check for new MP3 files, visit the web site to download them and then sync them to their MP3 players by hand. This was not convenient for taking the audio content on the go.

Adam Curry (also known from his stint as a MTV VJ in the mid-80s) wanted to simplify this process. He is the one that podcasting history gives credit for coming up with the idea to automate the delivery and syncing of this content to portable audio players.

Adam talked to Dave about updating the feed technology so that a new MP3 file posted to a blog would be automatically detected and downloaded in the RSS feed. This was when Dave added the “file enclosure” to the feed technology. This simply means that the feed tells your computer where to download the audio file.

The last piece of this puzzle in podcasting history is when Adam started writing the first podcatcher software (news feed aggregator or collector for podcasts). The software checked for new updates, read the file enclosure to see where to go and download the audio file. The MP3 was then automatically transferred to an iPod.

Taking a couple steps back in this history, podcasting would not have happened without the rapid spread of MP3 files and MP3 players. MP3s allow audio to be compressed into small enough files to be transferred on the internet and stored on small devices.

MP3 players came about to allow people to take their music with them on the go. The Apple iPod is by far the most popular of the MP3 players. I know I can’t take more than a few steps in New York City without seeing those white headphones hanging off of someone’s head. It’s from the iPod that we get the “pod” in podcast (although you do not need an iPod to listen to podcasts).

The first appearance of the word “podcast” in history was in an article in The Guardian on February 12, 2004. The creation of the term
is credited to Ben Hammersley who wrote the article and used podcast as a synonym for audioblogging or amateur internet radio. The word stuck.

A small group of early podcasters emerged from the blogging community. The buzz grew rapidly and the podcasting revolution began. Thousands of podcasters have popped up on the internet.

As MP3 players have spread and the storage on them has gotten larger, listeners have started looking for new audio content to take on the go. Not only that, but consumers are getting tired of the same old broadcast radio content that is controlled by large corporations.

In a nutshell, that is the history of podcasting. Podcasting has filled the need of those who want to share their audio creations with the world as well as the listeners who want new, better and more plentiful content to fill their MP3 players.

The story really doesn’t stop there. New podcasting technologies continue to emerge. New markets are being created. New ideas are being formed. Podcasting is moving at the speed of light.

More for Valera:

Business Podcasts

audio, transcript and worksheets

http://www.businessenglishonline.net/resources/podcasts/

Nils' Interview

Audio

http://www.businessenglishonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Nils-Pre-intermediate.mp3

Worksheet

http://www.businessenglishonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Nils-Worksheet.pdf

Transcript

http://www.businessenglishonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Nils-Transcript.pdf

Marta's Interview

Audio