Most can agree that the iPod is a cool little contraption. Since its birth a mere five years ago, the little white box has exploded into a pop culture phenomenon. With the ability to hold most anyone’s entire music collection, or, with the new video iPod, entire seasons of television shows in one very sleek pop tart sized object, the iPod has sent portable media zooming into mainstream necessity.
Now with the push of a button you can party with Bono, watch the cast of “Desperate Housewives” do their thing, or even be lectured by your chemistry professor.
Due to the work of Mississippi State University’s Information Technology Services (ITS), students in select courses can now download class lectures and listen to them from their PC or iPod by way of podcast.
“Podcasting is a way to distribute audio or video via the Internet,” said Kathleen Olivieri, ITS lead computing consultant. “It’s a synchronization tool. You subscribe to a class, or, for example, a TV show, and as new episodes are available, they go automatically to your computer.”
Though it adds to portability and convenience, an iPod isn’t actually necessary to take part in ITS’s new project.
“The essential things are an Internet connection, a computer and your podcatching software, and right now we are supporting iTunes,” Olivieri said. “What Mississippi State is doing is piloting three courses this semester. The faculty has graciously agreed to be a part of the project, so we’re testing it.”
The ITS team has provided MSU with a service that few universities nationwide have access to.
“We’re not the first university to do this,” Olivieri said. “There are other universities that are doing this. However, the deployment was very quick. I think that that’s a testament to our technical support team. They were able to roll this out from December to Jan. 18.”
One of the major goals of ITS’s project is to ensure that the podcast process is easy and convenient for the professor and doesn’t interfere with the lecture.
“One thing that makes our podcasting project unique is that faculty members walk into the classroom, and they simply go to the Web site and record a lecture via the [Internet],” Olivieri said. “It’s automatically published.”
Style and comfort were taken care of as well. Participating faculty members wear either a classic lapel microphone or a barely noticeable, flesh-colored “over the ear” microphone. Many of the participating faculty members are very enthusiastic about the project. Some are even coming up with their own ideas for uses of the university’s new technology.
“We’ve got one professor that’s interested in doing additions to the lecture,” ITS director of systems and networks Tim Griffith said. “Not necessarily recording a lecture, but taking a portable unit and recording notes or whatever else they want to make available on our Web site.”
“If you were out and about and you were interviewing a CEO that would be a great thing to use in business class, or a conversation in a foreign language class, the goal is to give faculty control over what is available and what is not available,” he said.
ITS’s accomplishments thus far leave faculty and students looking to the future. Is MSU on the verge of iPod university?
“At the end of the semester and over the summer we’ll be looking at the results, checking to see if it affected attendance, what the professors think about it, if the students even downloaded and were they interested,” Griffith said. “If it makes sense here, we may be doing a wider deployment.”
The courses currently offering podcasts are Principles of Public Relations, Chemistry II and Evaluation of Ag and Extension Education.
To access Mississippi State podcasts, visit podcast.its.msstate.edu and click “Course Listings.”
To subscribe to a podcast, click the small orange icon next to the Web address, drag it into the podcast section of iTunes, and enter your net ID and password. Or, to simply listen to the podcast online in your computer’s default media player, click the course, the lecture and enter your net ID and password.
The lectures are open to all current students and employees with a valid net ID.