Podcasting

     Podcasting has been around for a wile, although its been available to us for a wile it has only been popular the last few years. Podcasting is a free/cheap way for people to get information across, either in audio or video formats. The main reason podcasting is a success is how it is utilized in the education community. As an example, If you go on itunes most of the podcasts are an online lecture from different professors around the world, great for both the students and people wanting to learn for free. Podcasting is great because anyone can download it to their laptop, mp3 player, or evan their phone. You can listen to it while you drive to work or studying for a test. My opinion is that it is better listening to a lecture than reading over the chapter in the book, podcasting makes that possible anytime anywhere.
     Podcasting is very different from web 2.0 and very alike in other ways. In web 2.0, information is gathered in one place from anyone who goes to the site. Podcasts are made by one source and are not edited by others. Both web 2.0 and podcasting are designed to give the public information, though podcasting has been proven to be more accurate based on the huge amount of professors recorded lectures. Itunes podcast library and wikipedia have alot in common: spread of information, unlimited facts, easy to use.  But the main reason wikipedia is used more than podcasts is the time it takes to find an answer, with podcasting a student would have to watch/listen to the whole clip(which could take ten minutes) a student could find the answer right away on Wikipedia, everyone knows wikipedia is not very accurate but most pages have a work sited section, this is very helpful if a student is trying to find a starting point for a project.
     My entire life I have liked to learn things more than anything, when I first learned about podcasts a few years ago I watched an entire semester worth of MIT's computer programming class and recently I have gone through  Oxfords business lectures. Each week i drive a little over 200 miles, I cant buy enough music to keep me occupied and the radio commercials bug me too much, so I listen to tons of podcasts from Itunes   University podcast section during my travel, I hook my ipod to my cars audio. I don't use my Ipod for anything other than a "DVR" and podcasting. I use my phone for music, though podcasts are able to be put on any device Itunes has revolutionized podcasting, making it time consuming to try and download it to a device other than an Ipod. I use podcasting all the time.