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.
