Cliff’s Notes type stuff on your iPod?
Why not?
You can have that along with Cisco study guides, language tutorials, and flash card style programming — all on your iPod, iPod Nano, iPod Classic, iPod Touch, iPod Shuffle, and heck, you could even put it on your iPhone.
It’s not E-Learning, it’s iLearning! There’s a whole list of things you could do with that iPod besides listening to the latest bubblegum pop song.
For instance, you could also subscribe to LISTen.
Free Podcasts rock
There is so much good content in the form of Podcasts out there that is absolutely free, especially Foreign language content from European TV and Radio programmers…way more easier to access than trying to tune in on shortwave radio. In English, the BBC of course has high quality stuff, too, also completely free.
There’s still not that many Library-related Podcasts around, but there are a few of them that update semi-regularly. Podcasting is a lot of hard work, even more so than a well done blog. One of my favorite Podcasts, “Dogma Free America” recently signed off the air for good because the host of the show lamented all the time and preparation was becoming too much like a “real job”, next to his regular day job. The Bad Astronomy Blog Podcast ended for much the same reason…Phil had a good time with it but quickly became overwhelmed by just how much is involved in putting together a quality podcast on a regular basis.
There’s probably a niche out there for Library-related podcasts—but I think only with strong institutional support of some kind….like ALA, or ALA-LITA, or CILIP or CLA or even OCLC, willing to actually pay a professional producer/program director and necessary support staff.
By contrast, Shoe-string budget, one-or-two person Podcasts seem to be destined to have short lives of only a few years at best, with few exceptions. It’s just too much hard work for one person to sustain, unpaid, for a long duration.
Zune is probably better, and I wouldn’t have the foggiest idea how to hack my iPod, even if I wanted to. But for now it suits me just fine. I upgraded from a 1G Nano to an 8G Nano because I realized 1G just wasn’t enough for my listening tastes in Podcasts.
A way to help LISTen stay free content
This provides a way to help sustain LISTen: http://stores.lulu.com/erielookingproductions
This also provides a way to help sustain LISTen: http://tinyurl.com/ypmduw
Further items may well be added as time goes on. We still have discussions to get through here first. We might even be able to release audio CDs of prior episodes as they age off the RSS feed.
LibVibe and LISTen are the closest to having professional audio production people among the few library podcasts that end up on my iPod. Uncontrolled Vocabulary’s audio is set by the TalkShoe system in lieu of a human being. As to continuation, we are on our first season. Week by week we’ll be here. As the engineer has said to me multiple times, LISTen will continue to be produced as long as people are listening, the podcast is serving the LIS community, and that we are still able to produce it.
As to Zunes, I know we are not listed in the Zune Marketplace. This is not for a lack of trying. I have not seen many Zunes out in the wild, either. The Zune market share is sufficiently small that LISTen is less likely to be played using such a device in lieu of an iPod.
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Stephen Kellat, Host, LISten