Introduction to podcasting 2, March 2010 Gabriel Peterson, PhD North Carolina Central University School of Library and Information Sciences

What is podcasting? Podcasting is the practice of recording content and distributing it online. Podcasting requires no special equipment or proprietary software. Podcasting works well with existing technologies for online course content delivery such as Blackboard.

Materials required: Computer with: Microphone Many laptops come with a mic, which may be adequate for your needs. I tend to wander a bit while lecturing, so a headset or lapel mic is preferred. (I use the BlueAnt59i bluetooth headset for my cell phone. Price: approx $60 from Amazon.com)

Materials required: The ability to receive signals from your microphone if your mic is not natively supported (I use a Kensington Bluetooth USB Adapter so my laptop can receive the signals from my bluetooth headset. Approx. $25 from Amazon.com)

Materials required: Enough storage space for audio files (A semester's worth of raw recordings gets big fast) Install recording software: Audacity http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ Works in any OS, is free, small and powerful.

Podcast Content Lecture material Powerpoints, documents, assignments. TIP: A note about copyright Thanks to the TEACH act, you may legally distribute course material online provided that the material is for classroom use and that distribution is limited to the class, (for example, by putting it in the password-protected Blackboard folders).

Getting ready: Confirm functionality of mic & sound levels: Adjust audio settings so that the microphone is your audio input. (Settings->Control Panel->Sound and Audio Devices->Audio->Sound Recording) Start Audacity Do a quick sound check: Record a few seconds of sound and play it back.

Showtime Give the lecture You can run audacity in the background while lecturing and giving power point slides and such. Start Audacity Start a new file (Ctl+N) Start recording (The round red button) Start lecturing Begin with an introductory sentence “This is the podcast for LSIS4000 Chapter 2. It references the power point slides found in Blackboard under the filename LSIS4000Ch2.ppt”

Tips Number your slides and refer to them by number in the lecture Repeat any question asked from the live audience before answering it Avoid making reference to the date or holidays if possible

Tips Periodically stop the recording and save the file, then start a new one. (I try to break between 45 min and an hour or at the end of a chapter, whichever comes first.) There are several reasons for this: Breaking the lecture recording into clips makes the files smaller. This makes it makes it much faster to convert and upload the files. Smaller files are more convenient for the listener to transfer and easier for them to navigate If the system crashes, you will only lose the last bit of the lecture, rather than the whole thing.

When you finish a segment Stop recording (The button with the yellow square) Save the file as an audacity project file (.aup) File->Save As Label the file: (PodcastingIntroPt1.aup) Start a new segment. (Ctl+N)

Editing TIP: If you need to edit, make a copy of the file and edit that, rather than editing (and possibly damaging) the original. If you need to edit a segment, highlight the area you want to remove and press delete.

Editing Audacity is a powerful audio editing and manipulation tool. Today I have shown you how to switch it on and off; the vast majority of its functionality has not been touched upon in this presentation. For more information about editing: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/manual- 1.2/tutorial_ed_beginner2.html

Exporting When you are done editing your segment, export it. You need to save as MP3 because Audacity (.aup) files only work in Audacity and are very large. Conversely, MP3 is both universal and highly compressed. In Audacity: File->Export as MP3 label the file appropriately: (PodcastingIntroPt1.mp3)

Upload to server When the file has saved as an MP3: Give it a listen in a couple of random spots to make sure everything is OK. Upload the file to the server where your course documents are hosted. (I upload to Blackboard Course Documents like a document and put the podcast files with the lecture slides.)

Resources For more information, there are numerous web resources. http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Creating_a _simple_voice_and_music_Podcast_with _Audacity

There are even books available on this subject. Here are two that are available online from the University library: Podcasting for Dummies by Tee Morris and Evo Terra John Wiley & Sons © 2006 (362 pages) ISBN:9780471748984 Get the inside scoop on listening to, producing, and distributing podcasts with this helpful guide. The book points you toward the best hardware and software for creating one, and makes it easy to turn your computer into a recording suite, and more. Podcasting Bible by Steve Mack and Mitch Ratcliffe John Wiley & Sons © 2007 (596 pages) ISBN:9780470043523 From an in-depth look at the basics, to high-level recording techniques, to creating a revenue-producing business, this comprehensive guide shows you how to create and market successful podcasts from your desktop, for your company, or in the studio

Gabriel Peterson NCCU, SLIS 02/03/2010               This work by gpeterson@nccu.edu is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.