I’ve been putting the Apple TV through the paces the last couple of days. This evening I queued up the music collection from my iMac in the other room, turned on shuffle mode, and streamed away. This is a great way to rediscover your music collection, and makes it easy to put some background music on while you, say, work on homework.
My favorite feature, though, is podcasts. My history with podcasts has been hit and miss. I’ve had trouble getting into them in the past because of either quality issues or, more usually, I didn’t want to be tied to a computer to view them (I do listen to some audio podcasts on my iPod, though, while mowing the lawn).
Before the Take 2 version of the Apple TV system software was released a few days ago, you had to use iTunes on a Mac or PC to download podcasts, then either sync or stream them to the Apple TV. This isn’t complicated, and would probably be the route to take if you have podcasts to listen to or view for a class or clips you want to hold onto for the long term (like, I have the entire Tiki Bar series on my iMac’s hard drive). With Take 2, though, you can browse and search iTunes’ podcast directory directly on your TV. This makes podcast consumption more like channel surfing. The upside of this is I’ve found some interesting things to watch or listen to I probably wouldn’t have found via previous channels.
My favorite so far is Play Value (you can watch online, if you want, without an Apple TV). Play Value is a show that talks about the history of the video game industry in a format similar to the I Love the 80s series on VH1. The production quality is high–the video itself is in 720p high definition, and the experts, who provide commentary on the topics such as the rise and fall of Atari or the torrid backstory behind Tetris making its way outside the Iron Curtain, are actually a little more believable as “experts” than, say, the B-list celebrities VH1 trots out for Top 100 Songs of the 90s. Definitely worth a view.
What’s this have to do with instructional technology? There’s quite a bit of content an instructor could find and assign, out there in podcast form, that the instructor could assign or make available as support material. I remember when I was a kid and films and slides (and, eventually, VHS tapes) had to be ordered in advance, a member of the AV club had to wheel in a projector on a cart, and we sat waiting for the film to snap or smolder in the intricate gears of the projector. Downloadable media such as podcasts is the AV club of the 2000s. Take a look around, you may be surprised at what you’ll find.
