Podcasting at UC San Diego

I choose a podcast which talks about how works the podcast in UC San Diego. Twenty seven lecture halls are podcast ready. Podcast files are available for viewing and download at podcast.ucsd.edu within a few minutes of being recorded. 

The system works like this:

• faculties sign in to the podcast at ucsd.edu site
• they select courses that they want to podcast
• sign the podcast agreement
• the class time are noted and the recording is automatically schedule

For example, they show a teacher, Jason J. Jones, in a classroom with a structure where a microphone amplify his voice and transmit the audio signal to a « mac mini » and it starts to record his lecture. After that, they send a lecture to a podcast server what is automatically made it available online. As the podcasting service grows, it is expending to include video podcasting, currently six classrooms have video capabilities. In the interview with Christine Bagwell who is associate director at ACMS (Academic Computing and Media Service), she says that podcast is important to them because they didn't have to take a technician with a camera which can be really expensive. It also said that the most important thing besides the audio is picking up this on the screen. Professor James C. Nieh, expert in animal behavior and communication, make an example. According to Christine, for someone from another campus thinking that it sounds great it is still important to understand that it is adding work for them. Indeed, first they have a way to check all the new request and they have a single button « add » to permit them to be online. Secondly, they have a schedule system checking if all courses are online at time. They had already thinking about this few years ago but the price made it impossible. It was twenty thousands dollars per room without counting a technician. And the idea to take a low cost equipment and fix it to mix it with the pre-existing equipment came. 

With some innovative thinking, many podcasting related tasks have been automated. By focusing of using open source software whenever possible and using existing classroom equipment UC San Diego’s podcasting system has been affordable and scalable.