It’s every student’s dream: wake up for school, stumble over to the computer and download the day’s class lectures, from COMS to CHEM, then crawl back into bed — iPod in one hand, notebook in the other.

To most students, podcasting proposes an idea of almost unlimited leisure, letting them learn on their own time and in their preferred location. However, NIU may not be that close to converting to a podcasting reality just yet.

Breaking down podcasting

Aline Click, assistant director of NIU’s eLearning Services, said podcasting stands for portable digital broadcasting, and is based on Internet subscriptions that allow you to “shop” for audio or video files on a server such as iTunes. Even though iTunes is a Macintosh application, both Macintosh and Windows users have access to the podcasts. The user downloads a podcast and can either listen to it on the computer or upload it to a portable digital media player.

Some of the most popular podcasts right now include National Public Radio (NPR), Fox’s LOST, PotterCast: Harry Potter on the Air and even NIU’s own Inside Huskie Sports, Click said.

Click said podcasting, at least for NIU students, isn’t that far along yet. NIU Outreach Services and community college partnerships were given a grant this year to develop materials to create resources for students taking online courses, for more instructions regarding the Blackboard course server and for off-campus students.

Developing the program

The server may be up for courses as early as January of next year for student use.

“As soon as the server is ready we plan to make an official announcement with instructions on how to access the server,” Click said.

Once the program is up and running, professors with interest in creating podcast courses can attend a training session where they will learn the basics of how to develop and publish their podcasts, said Jason Rhode, assistant director of the Faculty Development and Instructional Design Center.

“There will obviously be costs associated with hosting and server maintenance and that will need to be addressed at some level, but our goal is to make our server available to all faculty who want to use it for teaching purposes,” Click said.

Click also said one of the priorities will be to keep the server clean and well-maintained, so students and instructors will face minimal problems. Having a single server that will host all instructors’ podcasts, instead of having them in different places all over the Internet, will cut down on the time it takes to fix problems.

Click said the development of the lessons and time spent downloading can make more work for the instructors. Professors must also record their lessons onto an audio file.

“There are a number of free applications that make [downloading files] painless,” Click said. She said professors must then upload their file to the NIU server and share the link with their students.

Tiffany Smith, a junior early childhood studies major, said she thinks people will be doubtful about the new technology and that in the beginning she expects more flaws than advantages.

“Hopefully professors will give the students a chance to meet in class at least a few times throughout the semester so they can make contacts for study groups and to get help,” Smith said.