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There are currently four digital media distribution services supported by the OIT Learning Technologies group: iTunesU Academic, Wimba Podcaster, podcast.umd.edu, and Streaming Media. Each has advantages and disadvantages depending upon the context of its use.

Advantages

iTunesU Academic

• Students are familiar with the iTunes environment.
• Access to content requires University of Maryland authentication and can be limited to members of a specific course.
• Students can synch content with their portable media players so they can engage with the material at a time and place most convenient to them.

Streaming Media

• Instructors can place large video and audio files on the streaming media server and link them to ELMS or to another web site.
• Streaming media can broadcast live events.
• The streamed file cannot be downloaded to a student desktop; this makes it a good choice for audio or video files that contain copyright protected content.
• The plug-ins required to view a streamed file, e.g., Quicktime or Realmedia, are free and readily available.

Wimba Podcaster

• Instructors (or students) can create brief podcasts within an ELMS course space itself; no need to learn how to use recording devices like Windows Sound Recorder or Audacity.
• Instructors control where and how students interact with audio content.
• Students can subscribe to course content with a podcast aggregator.
• Instructors have the option to require that students access the podcast within the ELMS course space, this makes it a good choice for audio or video files that include copyright protected content.

podcast.umd.edu

• Instructors can place video and audio files on this media server and link them to ELMS or iTunesU or to another University Web site.
• UM authentication to content is optional, depending upon where the podcast files are actually made available to students.
• Media service supports a variety of file formats as large as 100 megabytes (audio) and 250 megabytes (video).

Disadvantages

iTunesU Academic

• Podcasts can be downloaded to a portable media device; this would not be a good option for content containing copyright protected material.
• Uploading files to the iTunesU academic server can take a long time (the process can time out when uploading very large (300mg+) files).

Streaming Media

• Students must have either the Quicktime or Realmedia plug-in on their local computers in order to view the streamed media in their web browser.
• Streamed media cannot be downloaded to a portable media device nor can students create an RSS feed to it.

Wimba Podcaster

• Wimba Podcaster is limited to files sizes of 10 megabytes or less.
• Wimba Podcaster requires a Java plug-in both to record and to listen to podcasts.

podcast.umd.edu

• Podcast files cannot be accessed directly on podcast.umd.edu; they must be linked into another Web-based environment.