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The key component aspects of podcasting

"Podcasting" is the most used term to attract our attention, but really there are a cluster of technical advances each important and usable by themselves, although usually more powerful together. This page pulls them apart. (For explanations of the technical terms, see this companion page.)

• Cheap but high quality audio recording.
• Cheap (largely free) and easy publishing and distribution of audio recording.
• Mechanisms for "push" distribution of digital content, that work like subscriptions rather than going to the shops daily. This is particularly important for things like news, where the consumer cannot know what they want in detail before they see it (that's the whole point); but does know the kind of things they are and aren't interested in (e.g. which magazine). "RSS".
• Open world wide publishing (distribution). We are used to this for text: but the same can be applied to audio (and video). Of course, many authors do not want their particular pieces distributed like that. So there are two important ways to go here: open distribution for everyone, and protected sites, so that a specified group only have access. In education, there are good arguments for both: textbooks and academic journal articles have always been intended for everyone who wants them; while a contrasting aspect of learning, is a quite small community ("the class") of people whom you are learning with: and freedom from being overheard by others contributes to a better atomosphere for learning through interaction with your learning community.
• Mobile players: just as a huge advantage of printed text is that you can easily carry a book or magazine around, and read it almost anywhere, so now (pretty recently) there are audio players each smaller and lighter than books, that allow you to carry round a copy of an audio (or video) piece and listen to it almost anywhere. This allows "flexible" use: each audience member does not have to be at the same place at the same time as the others. Asynchronous use, not broadcast technology.

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