Webinar? A Technology Update for Myself! (You know you need one too!)

Traci Krzywicki, CAM, CAPS

Webinar? Web Conferencing? Blog? Podcast? I’ll admit, I’m a Generation Xer who has a lot to learn about what the internet now has to offer. The terminology seems to keep coming, and I seem to keep guessing. But I am a webinar teacher now. I MUST COMPUTE. So, I started doing my research, where else? Wikipedia. Seems being that I am a “Wicki” myself, I feel an obligation to the site. Good thing, I think, cause it never lets me down . . . .

Web conferencing is used to conduct live meetings or presentations over the Internet. In a web conference, each participant sits at his or her own computer and is connected to other participants via the internet. This can be either a downloaded application on each of the attendees computers or a web-based application where the attendees will simply enter a URL (website address) to enter the conference.

A webinar is a neologism to describe a specific type of web conference. It is typically one-way [1], from the speaker to the audience with limited audience interaction, such as in a webcast. A webinar can be collaborative [1] and include polling and question & answer sessions to allow full participation between the audience and the presenter. In some cases, the presenter may speak over a standard telephone line, pointing out information being presented on screen and the audience can respond over their own telephones, preferably a speaker phone. In the early years of the Internet, the terms "web conferencing" was often used to describe a group discussion in a message board and therefore not live. The term has evolved to refer specifically to live or "synchronous" meetings.

A blog (a contraction of the term "Web log") is a Web site, usually maintained by an individual [1], with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. "Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.

Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, Web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual, although some focus on art (artlog), photographs (photoblog), sketches (sketchblog), videos (vlog), music (MP3 blog), audio (podcasting), which are part of a wider network of social media. Micro-blogging is another type of blogging, one which consists of blogs with very short posts. As of December 2007, blog search engine Technorati was tracking more than 112 million blogs.[2] With the advent of video blogging, the word blog has taken on an even looser meaning — that of any bit of media wherein the subject expresses his opinion or simply talks about something.

A podcast is a series of digital-media files, which are distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds for playback on portable media players and computers. The term podcast, like broadcast, can refer either to the series of content itself or to the method by which it is syndicated; the latter is also called podcasting. The host or author of a podcast is often called a podcaster.

The term is a portmanteau of the words "iPod" and "broadcast",[1] the Apple iPod being the brand of portable media player for which the first podcasting scripts were developed (see history of podcasting). Such scripts allow podcasts to be automatically transferred to a mobile device after they are downloaded.[2] As more devices other than iPods became able to synchronize with podcast feeds, the term was redefined by some parties as an abbreviation for the backronym "Personal On Demand broadCASTING".[3][4][5]

Though podcasters' web sites may also offer direct download or streaming of their content, a podcast is distinguished from other digital media formats by its ability to be syndicated, subscribed to, and downloaded automatically when new content is added, using an aggregator or feed reader capable of reading feed formats such as RSS or Atom.

Streaming multimedia is multimedia that is constantly received by, and normally presented to, an end-user while it is being delivered by a streaming provider (the term "presented" is used in this article in a general sense that includes audio or video playback). The name refers to the delivery method of the medium rather than to the medium itself. The distinction is usually applied to media that are distributed over telecommunications networks, as most other delivery systems are either inherently streaming (e.g. radio, television) or inherently non-streaming (e.g. books, video cassettes, audio CDs). The verb 'to stream' is also derived from this term, meaning to deliver media in this manner.

Okay, okay - I know, there’s a lot of terminology above. But admit it, you learned something. For example, I am glad to know that “blog” came from “web” and “log”. I have been wondering!!! Cool thing is, I plan on doing/using all of these things here at edu4pm.com. By writing this - I believe I am a blogger. (A Web Logger, that is). Cool. I feel better already. Can’t wait to have you in class.