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).
Now you can get the histories,
put them on your iPod, take a walk
by the river, & give them a listen.
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.
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:
•
•
•
•
http://www.nyetwork.org/wiki/MiniWiki
http://www.oddmuse.org/cgi-bin/wiki/SiteMap
http://twiki.org/
http://www.pmwiki.org/
• Podcasts: Here are handouts/resouces for
wikis, podcasts and blogs in education:
• http://tep.uoregon.edu/workshops/events/year0607/fall/blogswikispodcasts.html