Sony - Wireless Microphone

The Sony WCS999 Wireless Microphone is a inexpensive wireless lavalier microphone.  The microphone is omni-directional microphone and picks up sound from all directions. The  wireless transmitter is easy to fit in your pockent and clips onto clothing for proper positioning. The wireless receiver plugs into the audio recorder microphone input. There are 3 channels that enable you to choose another channel if there is interference.

Podcasting The Do-It-Yourself Guide - Book

“Podcasting The Do-It-Yourself Guide” - By Todd Cochrane

Educator’s Podcast Guide - Book

“Educator’s Podcast Guide” - By Bard Williams

Podcasting for Teachers - Book

“Podcasting for Teachers” - By Kathleen P. King and Mark Gura

Downloading the Portable College - Community College Week

“Downloading the Portable College” - The launch of iTunes U fuels the expanding use of podcasts at colleges across the country.

Wimba Podcaster from Wimba Inc.

The Wimba Podcaster from Wimba Inc. is a part of the Wimba Voice Tools suite.  Blackboard Building Blocks and Blackboard Powerlinks are available with Wimba Voice Tools to create a seamless and easy end user experience for faculty and students.

Based on Wimba Inc.’s Voice Board technology, the Wimba Podcaster allows students and faculty to create a podcast together.  Recordings can be uploaded or recorded with the online Java based tool.  The Wimba Podcaster is currently optimized for voice which means that music files can lose fidelity.

Wimba Podcaster Web Site

Podcast LX from Learning Objects Inc.

The Podcast LX tool which is part of the Campus Pack suite from Learning Objects Inc. offers the ability for instructors to easily upload audio files to easily create a podcast from a Blackboard course. The Podcast LX tool is currently only offered as a Blackboard Building Block. The Podcast LX tool includes a streaming flash player as well as the podcast rss feed if a student would like to stream the audio file instead of downloading the mp3 file onto their computer. Video is not yet supported.

In addition to the licensed version of the Podcast LX tool which includes regular updates, there is an open source version at 1.0 called the Ocelot Podcaster that is offered through the Ocelot Community.

Podcast LX Website

Echo360 (Apreso Anystream)

Formerly Apreso Anystream, back in August of 2007, the company acquired a software called Lectopia from the University of Western Australia. In October, Apreso changed their name to Echo360. The lecture capture technology offered by Echo360 includes software only (for laptops), support for dedicated classroom PC’s, and a dedicated hardware appliance.

The unique aspect of Echo360 is that it is completely hands-off if desired. That is, the system can be linked to a campus classroom scheduling program to automatically start and stop the recording based on the instructors’ schedule. That is, the instructor doesn’t have to do anything to have their class recorded. The system starts and stops recording automatically.

Echo360 can publish to iTunes U and a wide array of streaming playback formats. A Blackboard Building Block is also available to provide a seamless and automated way for students to access course recordings.

Echo360 Website

Panopto CourseCast

Panopto is a relatively new player in the Enterprise lecture capture market.  Through Panopto’s “Socrates Project”,  Panopto’s lecture capture technology is offered for free to accredited academic institutions.

CourseCast is the name of the lecture capture product.  The soon to be released version 2.0 will be able to not only allow faculty to capture, edit, index, archive and stream video and audio over the Internet, but also it will support the delivery of the capture as a podcast.

Panopto Web Site

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