Continuing my descent into the Cult of the Mac, I recently became iPod enabled to listen to podcasts for my walk to work. I just discovered one series which, based on the intro, should be one to follow:
12 Byzantine Rulers (or check under “Educational” in the iTunes podcast directory).
Edit: “Rulers,” not “Rules.”
This looks very interesting - are there other sound files of lectures etc for MP3 players? (I’m not sure if the IPod directory is available unless you actually own an iPod). We have an MP3 at home but it belongs to my husband and he seems to use it all the time, so I might get myself one. I have been using tapes of myself reading out lecture notes etc for years as a study aid when I am driving around in the car (a sure way of falling asleep at the wheel!) I am sure hearing someone else speaking would be much more interesting.
I’m sure there are, but I’ve only now started looking for stuff. So far most programs are like radio shows (guests and interviews on shifting but related topics).
With the development of more and more tools to make this sort of thing really easy for the average computer user, I hope more scholars do present things like this. I have no doubt for-pay lecture series will appear soon, if they haven’t already.
(I’m not sure if the IPod directory is available unless you actually own an iPod).
Googling ‘podcast’ will get you several “page of lists” websites full of podcasts broken down in the usual portal-style taxonomy. There’s some very odd stuff coming from your side of the planet.
But the ‘podcast’ name, like ‘blogging’ before it, is simply to describe a repackaging of technologies that already exist. A podcast is just an RSS feed pointing to MP3 files. You can just play them on your computer, too.
How about this,
One of our distuinguisged and capable Greek and Latin Students gently lecture through the textbooks available here at Textkit and post the MP3’s for all to download.
Geoff
What do you mean by this? Just read from the text, or pontificate in greater detail about a particular chapter topic?
Go over the material and teach it feeling free to bring insights, and aiming for comprehension just as any teacher would in a class/lecture format. Friendly in tone so that no one gets put to sleep while driving 
Its a splendid idea that could even be incorporated into the joint grammar project that was being tossed about. Perhaps some other textkitoi (or even Episcopus the textkitten) have some ideas.
William Mounce offers a couple of things for his grammars. Maybe something similar would be valuable.
Chapter Summaries - http://www.biblicaltraining.org/classes/greek/greek_f.html
Also the full lectures - http://www.teknia.com/level3/chapter10/index.html
Geoff
I indend eventually to record a somewhat polemical account of the reconstructed pronunciation of Classical Greek. Doing lesson by lesson lectures would take a lot of work to do correctly.
William Mounce offers a couple of things for his grammars.
Woah. Such aggressive cheer.
You don’t need an iPod to see the podcasts on iTunes. Just download iTunes from apple.com/itunes/download. With iTunes, you can burn a CD of the podcasts and other things you find on iTunes and listen to them in the car or on a portable cd player but this, of course, would require a CD writer.
Yes, I have quite a collection of music in MP3 format - I just didn’t know about all the developments in broadcasting speech. Just not thinking outside the square! I know people have been making tapes of language lessons etc for years, but of course the MP3 format is much easier to play and store. We are now thinking of transforming our old stack of Spanish lesson tapes into MP3’s (we have been using a Tascam to do this with some old music tapes and records).
This could really open up some new directions in distance learning - I hope all the universities are taking note!
Thanks for your information and I think I am about to get myself a whole new lot of expensive toys – mmm! and the new MP3 players even have screens for video!
As you mentioned, most podcasts are in MP3 format. (The other emerging format for podcasts is AAC because that format supports chapter tagging within the file, somthing MP3s don’t.) I’m the publisher of Lars Brownworth’s Byzantine lectures and I origionally had them in MP3 so deciding to make a podcast out of them wasn’t much work.