Music department podcast debuts

The Department of Music and Theatre at GC&SU recently posted the first of several upcoming podcast episodes online.

A bassoon and piano recital that featured faculty members Lisa Lombardo and Richard Mercier on Monday, September 12 is currently available in a two-part podcast, accessible at:

http://podcasting.gcsu.edu/4DCGI/Podcasting/Channel/50.xml

“I’m excited about it,” said Dr. Douglas O’Grady, assistant professor of music theory and composition. “The first one was an experiment, and we’re sort of re-vamping how the podcasting interface will work so that people can subscribe more easily.”

The GC&SU Music and Theatre Department is working closely with the Information Technology Center on the podcasts, and with the possible exception of guest recitals, all of this year’s concerts will be available as podcasts.

“We have a lot of concerts throughout the season, and not everybody can make it to all of them, so we’ll post them to make them more available,” O’Grady said. “It will also let people outside of the area know what’s going on in the music department.”

Right now, podcasts are only available to GC&SU professors who use the technology in their classes, although anyone can upload the podcast once it has been made by subscribing to the URL.

“We hope that by the end of the year we can open it up so that whoever wants to have a podcast can,” said O’Grady.

Podcasting refers to the process of making an audio file that can be heard on either an iPod, iTunes or similar software when one subscribes to the particular podcast feed. Once someone has a subscription to the feed, new episodes of that podcast are automatically uploaded.

In addition, the podcast services are completely free.

Although podcasting is a fairly new concept on the GC&SU campus, some professors have used iPods in their classrooms since 2002.

Dr. Frank Lowney is manager of the Web Enabled Resources Department of the Information Technology Center and also has his own radio show podcast. Lowney helped bring iPod technology to campus.

“At first there were a lot of nay-sayers who thought the students would misuse the iPods and only listen to their own music in class,” he said.

One perk of using these kinds of technology in the classroom is that, with the iPods and iTunes, the students can watch slideshows and short films and listen to audio files on their own time, instead of in class.

It is not necessary for students to purchase their own iPods for their classes. The Web Enabled Resources Department has approximately 250 iPods that are available to professors who wish to use them for projects in their classrooms.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Oct 7 2005. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry