EDUtalk: How to Listen

Wirelesses by Elsie esq.
Attribution License

Why would you?

Listening to audio is more time consuming that reading. It is hard to bookmark interesting section, to scan quickly through content and to skip back and forward.

Alternatively audio provides extra information, the sound of voices. Audio can also be consumed while doing other things, driving, washing the dishes walking the dog etc.

We have had many wonderful folk send us audio and a tremendous lineup of guests on our live show. Well worth listening to.

On the site

Podcast and Radio EDUtalk

You can listen to both podcast and the internet radio stream just by using the players on the site. The audio should be played via html5 players when possible falling back to flash. You can also download the audio using the links provided.

Listening on the site or downloading individual audio files is fine for casual listening but there are other ways to get the content with less effort and while you are away from your computer..

By subscribing to the podcast feed

The podcast has an RSS Feed. This allows folk to ‘subscribe’ to the podcast with podcatcher software. This software will automatically check the feed and download new audio that appears on the site automatically. Most podcatcher can be configured to discard older audio files and can organise the audio in different ways.

List of podcatchers – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

On a Computer

Five Best Podcast Managers Lifehacker

The best known podcatcher is probably iTunes. iTunes runs on mac and windows pcs. You can subscribe in iTunes simply by clicking on the Subscribe to Edutalk with iTunes on the sidebar of the Edutalk site.

Mobile

Having podcasts on a mobile device is very useful. It means you can listen to podcasts as you travel. Personally I listen t opodcasts while comuting.

If you use iTunes you can sync your podcasts to an ipod or iphone.

There are also apps which will sync podcasts directly over wifi. Apple provide the podcast app for free. I use Instacast 2, version 3 is now avaliable.

Another popular iOS app is downcast.

On the android front here are some suggestions. I’d love to have some recommendations from folk I know.

Listening to the radio stream

You can also listen to the stream of Radio EDUtalk in a whole variety of ways. Appart from listening to the live shows, the radio plays random and organised sets of audio from the site. This can be a great way to find something unexpected.

On a computer

On the Radio Edutalk page ther are links to listen to the stram in a variety of applications including:

VLC – http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

Winamp – http://www.winamp.com

iTunes – http://www.apple.com/itunes/

WMP- http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/

Quicktime – http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/

Realplayer – http://www.real.com/international/

Mobile

In iOS some of the above links, if clicked on a browser will play through QuickTime.

There are also dedicated Internet apps for both iOS, eg FStream and Android, Icecast player.

Remember if you are listen to the stream away from Wifi on a mobile, it will use up any data allowence that you have.

There are many ways to listen to Edutalk, and other podcasts and Internet radio. You may find this is a great way to get information in addition to reading and watching.