ICTUpdate - a current awareness bulletin for ACP Agriculture

When podcasting first started, most of the focus was on creating a new form of Internet radio that could be distributed and saved. You don’t have to be online at a particular time to listen to your favourite programme as is the case with streaming media, where a broadcast is carried simultaneously on the Internet. Podcasting embraced the idea of ‘time-shifting’, similar to what video did for TV in the late 1970’s, in that you could record a programme and watch it when you wanted. But podcasting is slightly different; you don’t have to constantly check the website to see if a new file has been produced. Podcasting works by notifying you whenever a new file has been created and saving it automatically onto your portable mp3 player or computer. This makes podcasting another source of information, another outlet, where people can get access to what’s going on, from local news stories and crop prices to educational material provided by one school that could be interesting for another. The possibilities are endless.

Because it creates material that can be saved and passed around, podcasting raises some interesting possibilities, even for people in communities with limited Internet access. For example, a couple of years ago in Ghana, I taught university students and journalists to create podcasts of their own. One of the breakthrough moments for them was when they realized that a podcast didn’t have to be 60MB in size, it could be only one or two megabytes and still contain a lot of information. It wouldn’t have the audio quality or the resolution that broadband Internet users might expect but that doesn’t make it any less educationally or socially useful.

Podcasting and video blogging have now become industries of their own. Many people invest large amounts of money to make broadcast quality podcasts, but it is possible to use a computer with a microphone plus free, open source recording software and open source blogging software to post your podcast. And it doesn’t have to be difficult or expensive, you make your podcast just as complicated as you want.

Mobcasting

It is even possible to create a podcast from a mobile phone call. You simply leave a voice-mail message which is automatically converted to an audio file. You can’t edit it very easily but if you are looking to get something recorded and online quickly, then mobile phone podcasting is a very cheap way of doing that. This has also been termed mobcasting and could become useful where coordinated groups of people get together and produce content that could be shared among the group or with others. For example, if one member of a farmers’ cooperative is at the market he can give a quick update on crop or cattle prices via his mobile phone. This would go back to a central information point, such as the office of the cooperative, possibly hundreds of kilometres away. There the file can be edited or taken in its raw form. This new podcast can be updated automatically onto a portable audio player and taken to other members of the cooperative in a relatively short space of time.

In the very near future, when mobile devices are even cheaper and have an even greater amount of storage space and broadband access – and we’re reaching that point in Western countries now – podcasting could become a form of wireless broadcasting which could be ‘time-shifted’ and listened to whenever you want. In the context of the developing world, however, we’re not going to see that kind of bandwidth or infrastructure any time soon. But that doesn’t mean podcasting isn’t relevant to developing economies. The concept of podcasting began because bandwidth was scarce. You could leave your computer on overnight or go off to make dinner, and the specific podcasts you are interested in would be downloaded. You could then listen to them later, on your way to work, in the evenings or whenever it is most convenient to you.

A lot of people have experimented in podcasts that target local audiences in the developing world. The material they create is culturally and linguistically relevant. Information is produced in the local language and contains messages appropriate to the local situation, on specific crop production, for example, in a specific region. These can be distributed on small, very portable audio players, through local agricultural extension officers, to be played either to a group or by an individual at a time of their choosing. They could also be optimized for local bandwidth constraints and downloaded by those who already have Internet access. By encouraging people to create podcasts at such a local level you are creating a repository of knowledge that will be of benefit to these communities who will no longer have to rely on what is being produced in the West. And that is an enormous potential benefit. It is important therefore, that people are given the tools and the skills to produce those podcasts locally.

Andy Carvin is the former director of the Digital Divide Network, an Internet community for educators, activists, policy makers and concerned citizens. Andy also writes regularly on ICT for Development in his blog “Andy’s Waste of Bandwidth”.