Acorn

For Christmas I had two presents on my wish list. The first was a digital camera, and the second was an iPod. I regretfully decided that the more practical present for me was the camera.

As I watch my fellow students listening to their iPods on the path, I cannot help but feel a twinge of jealousy. But luckily with podcasts, I can reap the benefits of an iPod without actually owning one.

Podcasts are a relatively new technology. They can be audio or video files � like a radio show or a movie � that are posted on the Internet and played on iPods or on computers. I recently discovered podcasting this summer, thanks to Mugglecast. Mugglecast is the podcast of the Harry Potter fansite, mugglenet.com, and is a weekly radio show that offers commentary on the books. If I had an iPod, I would subscribe to the podcast and have it automatically downloaded to my iPod every week so I could listen to the show. Instead, I have to go to their website or iTunes to download it, and listen on my computer.

But Harry Potter fans are not the only people to jump on the podcast band wagon. Kaplan, famous for its help with standardized test preparation, created a podcast series for educational purposes. �The idea behind the podcast series is we want to share some practical insight for college and grad school bound students in a medium form,� said Chris Snyder, manager of business programs at Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions.

The first two podcasts they released were an LSAT Instant Analysis podcast and an MBA Recruiting Outlook podcast that had conversations with students from business schools like Penn Morton and recruiting career counselors of business schools. The LSAT podcast was very popular and, with over 15,000 downloads, it is the most downloaded item on the Kaplan website, Snyder said.

�[The popularity] is not surprising because of a survey of Kaplan LSAT students, 70 percent owned portable digital players like an iPod,� he said. The LSAT podcast is available through iTunes or kaptest.com/podcast and in upcoming months, Kaplan will provide GRE and MCAT ones.

�It�s a college audience, and they are always on the cutting edge and we want to be right there with them,� he said. �It�s so new, a year ago people hadn�t even heard about podcasting.�

It�s so popular that the word �podcasting� is actually the New Oxford American Dictionary�s 2006 word of the year. IPod usage is swiftly growing, which may be attributed to podcasts. �There are 6 million iPod users in the U.S., and it has been estimated that it could be 56 million by 2010,� Snyder said.

But Snyder wants students to be mindful that podcasts do not provide all the necessary information. �It�s important for students to realize that it�s not designed to be comprehensive test preparation, but it�s supplemental information on things like admissions and financial aid. It�s the kind of information that students will find useful,� he said.

Even some Drew classes have started using podcasts. Mitch Germansky, adjunct lecturer of computer science, is the CEO of the Lecture123.com Corporation. Ermansky teaches Introduction to Computersand Computing. �We use Lecture123 in class to record lectures, student presentations, homework, etc. and make it available for collaborative playback over the Internet. This playback includes audio and video podcasts,� he said.

It seems that podcasting is the way of the future of both recreation, and education. Duke University even gives free iPods to freshman when they first come to school.

Although the students at Drew are not that lucky, podcasting provides us with a new medium to help us learn. Maybe now I can guilt my mom into getting me an iPod for strictly �educational� purposes.

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