Podcasts and Vodcast?

I've never tried to watch or download a podcast until today. I had a really hard time trying to figure out how to download the podcast and vodcast to my mp3 player from the NOVA site. Very Very Frustrating but I think I have finally figured it out. I went to the Nova Podcast site and was able to stream the podcasts easily to watch on my PC using my yahoo account on directly on the website. My Question was How Do I Download It!!

Downloading (Subscribing to Podcasts)

First let me point out that I do not have an Ianything - no Ipad, Ipod, ect... so to the best of my knowledge itunes will not work with my cheap mp3 players by ematic. Itunes uses a different codeing besides mp3, mp4, acc.

So I had to track down a Podcatcher. I looked them all up in wikipedia and finally decided on Doppler. Now I installed the Doppler program. Next I opened it and went to the Nova site and followed these directions. It appears you have to right click on the xml then subscribe. You do this by Right Clicking on xml and select Copy Short Cut. Then click the add in Doppler to add the Podcast subscription you want. (Whew what a Pain!) After 4 hours I'm still trying to download only what I want. It will download everything in the subscription. ugh.

Ok Now I opened the Doppler files that it downloaded. Right clicked opened the containing folder then dragged that .mp3 player fomated file into my ematic MP3 player.

Why is it so hard to just download a MP3 file using podcasting. Podcasting is like a television program that you set your DVR to record but it will record all episodes not just the one you want. Wouldn't it just be easier to just list the mp3 files seperate and let you download them individually.

Well after all that it finally worked I was able to lisen to an MP3 from Nova about Electrical Blackouts. While Podcasting is interesting it just seems to be a complex way of giving people MP3 or MP4's(Video) they dont really need. It's a forced subscription in my opinion. I will be tracking down the MP4 and 3 I like and downloading them but as for having a subscription to a channel.... I'll try to prevent it.

After thoughts after cooling down.

Some advantage I see is that now I can download MP4's and other files to watch or lisen to on my MP3 player or my Laptop to broadcast in a Classroom.

If I could find a subscription or create a subsciption for my classroom I could send them videos each time they loaded the program using Doppler.




(Update) As I was about to run out the door I notice a file on my PC called NOVA so I put it into my removable harddrive so I could take it with me to work. I got a change to look it over on break and wow Podcasting is perfect for On-the-Go educational material. That site downloaded 15 videos that I can watch anywhere. I can see whole lessons being put on video and Podcasted or Vodcasted. I normally have to copy and past everything to a word document and print it out to look at it later when I don't have internet access but this podcasting could be the key to overcoming that.

(Update 2)
The University of North Colorado has launched a Vodcasting site. This site took me to Flipped Class Network a Vodcast Educational site. Appearently the concept of having students learn at home and apply at school has been around for a while.