FEATURE
Podcast

Podcasts go to school

ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOHN MACNEILL

Justin Gallivan was starting off the fall 2005 semester with his biochemistry course at Emory University in Atlanta when he noticed the front row of desks was covered with tape recorders and microphone-equipped iPods that students had brought to record his lecture. One coed even posted to the class website, offering five dollars for a recording. Earlier that summer, he had been reading about a new trend: coursecasting, or distributing class lectures as podcasts. So he bought his own $39 microphone, and gave the idea a shot.

To present a highly visual subject like biochemistry, Gallivan now relies on enhanced podcasting to include images like chalkboard drawings and website links to protein databanks, for example. Among his 200+ classmates, two-thirds of students regularly listen to podcasts of his lectures. They have also been downloaded more than 700 times per lecture,...

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