Podcasting Help

Definition

Let’s start with a basic description of podcasting.

“Podcast – A Podcast is like a broadcast of media, usually audio, that nearly anyone can create. Podcasts are downloaded, usually onto Portable media device, like an iPod so they can be played back at a later date. These are great for traveling when you might not have the ability to listen to live broadcasts, like in an airplane. They are also fairly easy to create and share, so even the average user can tell a story to capture your attention and share it with the world.” from A through Z computing

We’ll start with the notion that a podcast is an audio file. This was how they began even though now many of the best podcasts are “enhanced” with images or actual video podcasts (sometimes called “vodcasts”). If you like to work with video best, begin with that, otherwise, let’s record some audio.

PC / Windows

Most beginning podcasters on Windows machines use free software called Audacity. It works fine for the purpose of recording your voice.

Jason Van Orden presents great support from his site “How to Podcast”. I’ve linked to what I found to be the most important guides.

Overview: Podcast Tutorial: Four Basic Steps

How to Download and Install Audacity (get the latest stable version)
Good flash tutorials on recording and editing with Audacity
A note about ID3 Tags

Here are other good tutorials for people using Audacity.

Creating a Podcast with Audacity on a Windows PC – from PennState (video)
Audacity Tutorial – from Guides-and-Tutorials

Macintosh

You could use the same software and tutorials above for Audacity as it is cross platform, but the software on a Mac is far easier and powerful, so let’s use that. Here are a few online guides:

Podcasting with QuickTime Pro (pdf)
Podcasting with QuickTime Pro from Apple
Recording your Podcast with Garageband from Apple
Podcasting with Garageband 3 – from Lynda.com – great movie tutorials
Creating a Podcast with Garageband – from PennState (both video & complete pdf)

Uploading your audio file

Download this tutorial, to add a link to an audio file within a blog post like this: Bright Ideas for Education Intro. You could also get a podcast player depending on the version of WordPress you’re using and its plugins. Generally you won’t won’t want to link to the audio file like above, but embed it in a player like this:

[podcast]https://ozline.com/podcasts/Bright_Ideas_april_06.mp3[/podcast]

Thinking About Content

Again, Jason Van Orden does a great job helping us think about what we should actually podcast about and how to organise it. Look through these link and consider making this a class activity where students participate in the overall design of a program.

Below are some useful resources for podcasting. Also turn to a Podcasting Tutorial Page to help with more of the step-by-step.

Tutorials & Tips