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Do you listen to podcasts? Do you know what a podcast is? Do you know the MSU Podcasting Project on campus that lets professors record their lectures where students can listen to them from their computers?

But it's not just for lectures, students also have the chance to podcast, and two MSU students, Chelsea Lewis and Ryan Spletzer, are doing exactly that. Here's the 14th episode from the IVS Staff Podcast and all the details behind the podcast. You can find out more about the IVS Staff Podcast by visiting their Facebook Page or following them on Twitter. AND make sure to check out the February 26th episode because msuCatalyst's very own Megan Gebhart will be a guest on the show!

What (in a nutshell) is the IVS Staff Podcast?

The IVS Staff Podcast is a bi-weekly podcast that focuses on, well, whatever we want! The format and stories discussed usually revolve around techy and geeky things, but we also regularly delve into talking about movies, music, TV, video games and many other types of media or other stories and topics we find interesting.

Who is behind it? 

Chelsea Lewis, a junior in Journalism, and Ryan Spletzer, a sophomore in Business Management specializing in IT, both work on the podcast. They are student staffers for IVS, Interactive Video Services—a part of Broadcasting Services  who were hired in to work on projects for the organization's involvement in the MSU Podcasting Project.

Why podcasting? What was the motivation behind it? 

Up until the fall of 2009, the Project—as we like to call the MSU Podcasting Project for short –had not really had any sort of podcast of its own. The Project was started as a means of integrating podcasts into classes. That is, making classes that are video, or audio-taped, in media-capable classrooms available to students by means of podcast feeds, so that they can subscribe to such feeds and automatically have their classroom lectures and discussions delivered to their computers. The only podcasts we had as examples were lectures from classes that were not very interesting. We realized we needed our own podcast that we'd send out with topics that would appeal to the students of MSU, who quite honestly would probably get bored if we gave them lectures of Biology 411. This is how the IVS Staff Podcast was born. The name comes from Chelsea and Ryan's involvement with IVS.

How often do you record the podcasts?

The podcasts come out every other Friday. We have done a lot video podcasts in the past, but more and more we are realizing that people listen mostly to audio podcasts, the reason being that it's easy to do other things while you are listening to audio podcasts, like homework or working out or walking to class or what have you. That's why we recently decided that all the podcasts sent out on our feed are now going to be in audio format. We still will probably shoot videos from time to time, and those will be available for viewing on our site in a Vimeo player, and of course on our Vimeo page as well, but just all the audio from the videos we shoot will be sent out on our feed in MP3 format.

Our podcast is not in the iTunes store, but you can certainly use the iTunes program itself to subscribe! We provide a link on our site at where it will add our feed to your iTunes podcast section and subscribe you to our podcast. You can also go to the XML link on our site and copy that URL into any of your preferred media programs or portable media devices that handle podcast subscriptions.