Any frequenter of the EDUCAUSE blogs has likely experienced the potential of emerging technologies in media consumption. Cell phones, PDAs, and iPods are changing the way most of us (on one side of the digital divide) think, store information, and entertain ourselves. The Pew Internet & American Life Project reports that over 10% of American adults own iPods or mp3 players. EDUCAUSE’s Steve Worona points out that iPod technology is creating more unexpected ideas than you can count. And what’s more, notes Worona, iPods are only the beginning of this multimedia adventure.
EDUCAUSE is exploring the iPod trend with great curiosity. You may have noticed our first podcasting experiments at the NLII 2005 Annual Meeting, which resulted in a number of successful conference reports.
In the coming months, EDUCAUSE will continue to test alternative publishing techniques, to determine the value and usability of new media formats such as mp3 audio (podcasting) and streaming video webcast. We will post here a series of blog entries with corresponding multimedia attachments. Your participation is encouraged in these tests: both in publishing your own multimedia experiments, and in reviewing and offering feedback on ours. Your opinions are highly valued; they are the building blocks of an initiative to deliver EDUCAUSE resources to a new generation of information consumers.
Please keep an eye out for our multimedia experiments, and when you can, let us know how you interact with them. How can we best utilize these emerging technologies to suit the needs of the EDUCAUSE community?
Thanks for your participation.