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Digital Media > Build Your Own Podcast on Mac or PC |
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What
is Podcasting? Podcasting on a Mac Audio Enhanced Video Podcasting on a PC Audio Enhanced Video Add Your Podcast to iTunes Resources |
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Description
| Podcasts differ from other common multimedia formats in that they are released regularly – every day, week, or month, for instance – and are designed for automatic download to the user’s computer via RSS or XML feed. Like other emerging technologies, podcasting must be evaluated for its suitability to your specific content. |
Podcasts provide another channel for creating and delivering content to an audience that wants to listen when they want, where they want, and how they want (read more at Wikipedia). UT Faculty, Instructors, and Staff have been creating and posting podcasts at Volcasting@UT, UT's academic and event podcasting directory. Not quite ready to dive in headfirst? Don’t worry: the ITC will provide the assistance and equipment to help get UT Faculty and Instructors started. Just request our free production services.
Why Use Podcasts?
- "Push" your course materials and announcements to your students' desktops autmomatically
- Archive your lectures online for student review
- Create reusable tutorials for lab work or other common processes
- Use video or audio to demonstrate difficult concepts
- Capture travel experiences for educational use
- Share research findings with colleagues
and peer institutions
- Simplify your students' multimedia projects
Audio, Enhanced, or Video?
An audio podcast is an audio-only mp3 file. An enhanced podcast includes still images along with the audio. A video podcast many contain both audio and video.Which one will work for you?
If you want to record lectures, consider audio. At least one prominent study shows that, while students expected to benefit most from lectures recorded to video, they found in practice that audio files were more convenient, less distracting, and equally informative.
Enhanced and video podcasts are ideal for creating reusable demonstrations; best practices for using a microscope, for instance, or how to recognize common diseases in a horse. They are also excellent mediums for capturing travel, interviews, or unusual experiences. An instructor may document her trip to Brazil for classroom or research use, or even ask her students to create multimedia "tours" of a local point of interest. In the end, the best format is the one that is most effective in highlighting your material.
Viewing and Subscribing to Podcasts in iTunes
Podcasts can be found everywhere on the web. For the sake
of simplicity, we'll focus on the educational
podcasts found in iTunes. Open the iTunes software (the following
refers to version 7. If you have an earlier version, download
the latest version now; available free for Mac or PC).
With iTunes now opened, let's locate some of the
free educational offerings. In the menu on the left, select iTunes
Store. In the Quick Links on the right, choose Browse.
Navigate to Podcasts > Education > Higher
Education.
This will give you an idea of the breadth of educational podcasts
available. To narrow your search, type keywords from a specific
discipline in the search bar at the top right and add the
word "podcast".
A tiny icon of a video screen indicates a video podcast; the
others are audio. Click the arrow next to each entry to view
more information.
Here are a few links to pique your interest in podcasting:
NPR podcasts
http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast/podcast_directory.php
Is podcasting right for you?
http://www.elabs2.com/functions/message_view.html?mid=31190&mlid
=73&siteid=15988&uid=162650877b
Podcasting After iTunes: an article from Wired News
http://wired.com/news/culture/media/0,71257-0.html?tw=wn_index_2
Now that you've seen a little bit of what's out there, let's get
started on building a podcast of your own.
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