Podcasts and Wikis at the University of Oregon

Podcasts are: Sound files that are on a server and then downloaded to portable.mp3 players, like iPods or non-portable ones like a computer Usually they are recurring shows, like a radio program (think Terry Gross’ Fresh Air or Ira Glass’ This American Life)

I helped students find primary & secondary resources for an oral history project on the Willamette River that they put on a web page:

With a map showing the sites they researched:

Instructors planned to put the oral histories on a campus voice mailbox. So you could stroll along the river, see a sign saying there’s an oral history available for the spot and then use a cell phone to call the number. The voice mailbox recordings weren’t particularly good quality and the department had to pay to keep the vm. I suggested that they make them.mp3 files that could be downloaded from the site (or put on iTunes, where many find content).

put them on your iPod, take a walk by the river, & give them a listen. Now you can get the histories,

Wikis in the library They can be used by different people on different computers and different platforms, it is an ideal tool for posting information about what was happening on the reference desk at any time. I installed a wiki that worked with our university servers, with some help from the computing center staff.wiki

It looks like this: Easy to edit searchabl e

A sample search

Easy to make changes

Resources Wikis: unless you can set up and administer mySQL/SQL you'll want one based in Perl. Like these: Podcasts: Here are handouts/resouces for wikis, podcasts and blogs in education: 07/fall/blogswikispodcasts.htmlhttp://tep.uoregon.edu/workshops/events/year06- 07/fall/blogswikispodcasts.html