The THE published a news story on 30 July that reads,

"Some institutions may cancel freshers' week amid fears that it could lead to an explosion of swine flu cases, it has been claimed. It was reported on 23 July that universities are also considering shutting down parts of their campuses, quarantining infected students in halls of residence, and even delivering lectures via podcasts to contain the illness."

(http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=407576&c=1)

Can podcasting help us to stay in touch as teachers, learners and administrators in the event of such a crisis? We thought it would be useful to generate a list of ideas here and discuss further thoughts here:

Disaster Management and Contingency Planning became important topics for the sector in the US following Katrina and Virginia Tech - perhaps some thinking in advance can help us prepare for such eventualities.

Please contribute:

Podcasting Beats Swine Flu - some ideas!

• Regular update announcements from the VC's office
• Guidance from information specialists on independent study: finding, accessing and evaluating learning resources
• Use Skype, Elluminate VRoom or Elluminate,, DimDim and other Internet conferencing tools to record group discussions that can be shared more widely through the VLE
• Make brief screencasts that describe essential concepts or topics using software such as the free Jing tool
• Conversation beats monologue! - use the free Audacity recording software to post very short audio conversations to the VLE - no sneezing!
• Add the next idea here please...