Today I was able to podcast using the Blackboard Content Collection.

I had tried this once before… maybe I jinxed it because I went in assuming that the SSL would stop iTunes from being able to ‘catch’ my podcast. That test ended with iTunes giving me an error message that seemed to confirm my thoughts.

I moved on.

Today, I decided to look into links between Podcasting & Blackboard. There must be some schools doing it, right? Maybe with the help of a building block… I found a set of instructions that were similar to the ones I had followed earlier. I thought to myself ‘Heh, they’re probably not using SSL’, but I did feel a glimmer of hope – so I looked at their site. HTTPS.

That’s it. I’m trying this again.

I uploaded my media file to the CC. I took the address of the file from the properties section and added it to the enclosure tag of a quick & dirty “ready-for-podcasting” XML file I had worked with before. I uploaded the XML file and shared it with the users of my ‘classes’ (not that I needed to, for this test — I already have access to my own files).

I got the BBCC URL of the XML file & pasted it into iTunes….

No error message.

I got a login popup.

I quickly entered my Matrix username & password & watched as iTunes downloaded my test media file. I would like to say that I nearly cried, but seeing how this test only took 5 minutes the anticipation didn’t have enough time to build.

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Now that I’ve gotten this to work, here are my initial thoughts:

PROS

– this will work well for those concerned with intellectual property rights & don’t want their materials being publicly posted (BBCC podcasts are password protected)
– this will also work for those who want to target a specific group, as any of the users they share with will be able to access it by entering their passwords. BBCC has a pretty decent permissions set
– can allow individual users, full courses, full organizations, certain roles in certain courses, etc. etc.

CONS

– you still have to make up the XML file. this is the biggest hurdle I can forsee with podcasting in general. this is why i like the blog-mediacasting idea — no worrying about XML, the blog creates the code, you just have to get the URL and distribute it

… if someone could make a good podcasting building block that will generate the xml for you IN BLACKBOARD and allow for the CC storage, etc, that would be fantastic