[Graham McElearney]

Hi folks,

we are just starting to ramp up our use of Echo 360 here at Sheffield. One enquiry I have just had is about the range of links the system generates that we then pass on to our academic Presenters. A number of them (not surprisingly) are a bit confused and overwhelmed at the output, so I need to clarify....

As I understand it we have the:

Rich Media link - links to the "Echo proper" with video, screencast in main window and screencast thusmbnails down the left hand side.

Enhanced Podcast - a link to an m4b file which is a video of the screencast bit, along with the audio of the lecture

Vodcast - an m4v file link which seems to be the same as the above? Is it the same thing? I sone supposed to be downloadable or more widely playable on differnt devices?

Podcast - link to an audio podcast in mp3 format.

Then we have the RSS links.....

Podcast, Enhanced Podcast and Vodcast. I'm struggling to see the differences between these as they all seem to contain links to all media types for all the Echos in the given module, apart from they have specific links also to mp3, m4v and m4b files again.

I can live with the redundancy in the information supplied, but an important question remains about the RSS feeds - are these automativcally updated to include the new echoes for each module, and will the addresses of these feeds stay static as material is added to them? So can the lecturer just issue the address at the beginning of term and it will safely be updated by the system to include the new echoes as they are recorded?

Any ideas or examples of how people are doing this, ideally without any form of staff intervention from the systems/admin side would be massively appreciated and gratefully received.

all the best

Graham

Dr Graham F X McElearney,
Learning Technologist,
Learning and Teaching Support,
Corporate Information and Computing Services,
The University of Sheffield,
Computing Centre,
Sheffield S3 7RF,
tel 0114 2223040.

email g.mcelearney@sheffield.ac.uk

http://www.shef.ac.uk/cics

[EchoKaitlyn]

Hi Graham!

The products that Echo360 creates are listed below in descending order of "robustness" or completeness of offering:

Rich Media Presentation: The most complex/complete/"robust" product, targeted for computer playback. Includes
audio,
video,
"graphics" (computer, doc camera, sympodium, etc..),
thumbnails generated from the graphics (the location of the thumbnails on the screen depends upon the screen resolution),
optional text-based content like Closed Captioning or Transcription tracks,
optional keywords generated from OCR of the graphics,
Search of the text-based tracks (captioning, transcription, keywords)
This is handled in a browser playback and includes many different files and file types.

Vodcast (renamed to SCREENCAST in an upcoming release): Targeted primarily at playback on mobile devices like iPods/iPads that can play videos. Includes
audio,
graphics (computer, doc camera, sympodium, etc...)
This is provided as a single M4V file that includes both of the above tracks into a single video.

Enhanced Podcast: Targeted at playback on mobile devices like 1st gen iPods, which cannot play videos but CAN show still images. Includes
audio,
thumbnails of graphics, which are typically generated more frequently than the Rich Media Presentation thumbnails
This is provided as a single M4B file that includes both of the above tracks. The thumbnails are time-sychronized with the audio. This is a legacy format that was primarily a stop-gap because mobile devices at the time couldn't play videos. The file sizes, though, tend to be quite large by comparison to either screencast or podcast formats. We have very VERY few customers actually using this format, and have considered deprecating support for it if use continues to dwindle.

Podcast: Targeted at mobile playback. This is just the audio track, presented as an MP3



The RSS feed is a single landing page (one URL) for all presentations that are created within the course/section, and for a particular type of product. (ie., Vodcast has a separate RSS feed page from EnhPodcast or Podcast) Typically a user will "subscribe" to the RSS feed within an RSS feed reader app (iTunes, most browsers have this ability, Google Reader has it, etc...), and by subscribing they'll automatically see all of the updates to that RSS feed page. Most of the people I know using RSS feeds are publishing those target URLs to a web page, such as a faculty member's own website outside of the CMS/LMS, or within a CMS/LMS when Echo360 doesn't provide a native publisher.


I hope that helps!

Kaitlyn