Online Casting

To feed or not to feed?

I've been asking myself the "to feed or not to feed" question.

So, with a view to making some sense of the range of activity we're finding at different educational organisations under the umbrella of "online casting" - and with the name of our site an underlying consideration - I've been trying to get my mind around some of the terms we, and others, are using - and what we mean by these terms.
'Casts' whether broad-, web- or pod- are being interpreted and defined in a number of ways - and that's probably a good thing. But I thought it worth looking for some simple points of distinction. (Which you no doubt already have clear in your minds?)
So I've been scavenging through Wikipedia and here's a bit of summary of their definitions of podcasts and webcasts which might or might not be useful as discussion points for us, as well as a take on broadcasting that I rather like:

Broadcasting
Broadcasting is also the old term for hand sowing.
Sowing is the process of planting seeds. (Unlike animals, plants are limited in their ability to seek out favorable conditions for life and growth. As a consequence, plants have evolved many ways to disperse their population through their seeds. A seed must somehow "arrive" at a location and be there at a time favorable for germination and growth.)
Hand sowing is the process of casting handfuls of seed over prepared ground: broadcasting.
Key concepts:
Sowing
Dissemination
Dispersal
Prepared ground


Podcasting
Podcast = a podcast is distinguished by its ability to be downloaded automatically using software capable of reading RSS or Atom feeds.
Podcasters = individuals or organizations offering feeds
Podcatchers = special RSS aggregators with the ability to transfer the files to media player software or hardware.
Podcasting = "a digital recording of a radio broadcast or similar program, made available on the Internet for downloading to a personal audio player" (New Oxford American Dictionary)
Note: Podcasters' web sites may also offer direct download or streaming of their files
Key terms:
Digital recording
Feeds
RSS aggregators
Asynchronous broadcast/narrowcast
Download to a personal audio player


Webcasting
Webcast = a webcast uses streaming media technology to take a single content source and distribute it to many simultaneous listeners/viewers.
Key terms:
Streaming media
Distributed
Web broadcast
Simulcast (live) = synchronous

TT

posted by TerryT @ 12:01 PM