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311 Podcast Workshop

By RR | November 23, 2005

311ers,

Before Monday, you should check out the following information and resources on podcasting. If possible, one of your grop members should bring a laptop to class.

Examples of Podcasts

The Educational Podcast Network is "an effort to bring together into one place, the wide range of podcast programming that may be helpful to teachers looking for content to teach with and about, and to explore issues of teaching and learning in the 21st century." It has English language arts podcasts, including Shakespeare by Another Name and Book Voyages. These may be helpful examples as you work on your own collaborative or individual podcasts.

Recording and Editing your Podcast

To create a podcast, you will need a microphone, some editing software and editing softward like Audacity. For a list of free and commercial sofware, check out Podcasting News. When you are done recording and editing, you’ll export (or convert) your soundfile to .mp3 format and save this file.

Publishing your Podcast

Publishing your podcast involves making your podcast.mp3 file available on the web for others to download and listen to. There are a host of options for publishing:

1. Through Blogspirit. One of your group members may upload your podcast.mp3 to his or her Blogspirit account. To do this, just start a new post (perhaps describing your podcast) and then upload the file by selecting the speaker icon in the editing bar. (It is next to the tree icon.) Browse for your podcast.mp3 and upload it. IMPORTANT: this option will only work if your podcast.mp3 is smaller than 10MB.

2. Through your web space at GVSU. Every GVSU student gets a whopping 50MB of personal web space. And this option is pretty easy, particularly if you are on campus. Just log on a GVSU computer, go to your space on the N: drive. If you do not see a public_html directory, you will need to create it. Once this is done, put your podcast.mp3 in the public_html directory. Your podcast should now be online at the following URL: http://www2.gvsu.edu/~yourusername/podcast.mp3. Link to it from your blog.

It is also possible to publish to your GVSU web space from off campus, though I discourage this because of its difficulty and general spottiness. But if you are brave or just desperate, follow the directions at GVSU IT. You will need to download a sofware application called CORE FTP.

3. Finally, you could set up an account at Our Media. Registration is a bit of a hassle, but the service is free and works well. For this option, upload your podcast.mp3 to your account, and then link to the file from your blog. Here’s the cool part about this option: your podcast will actually stream over the web–which means no waiting for the dowload. This option becomes particularly cool if you embed a media player in the body of your blog post.

Looking forward to the workshop on Monday.

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