What is a podcast?
A podcast is a digital media file that is distributed over the internet using syndication feeds for playback on portable media devices and personal computers.
Where do you find podcasts?
iTunes
Educational Podcast Network
Podcast Alley
RadioWillowWeb -great elementary education example!
Classroom Ideas
- End of unit projects - performance assessments
- Book Group Projects
- Author Study
- Alternative to written reports (Biography, State Reports etc...)
- Independent Study
- Publishing Stories
- Poetry Jam
- Creating books on tape (fluency practice)
- Apple Lesson Plans
Creating a Podcast
Learning in Hand -Tony Vincent's site Learning in Hand is a wonderful resource to help you through the process of making a podcast. He is the creator of Radio WillowWeb and the guru of podcasting in schools. His site is packed full of useful links and printable organizers to get you going.
iLounge -This is a great article on how to create a basic podcsat. It's short and to-the-point!
Audacity
Audacity Tutorial
You'll need to dowload the latest Flash Player to play these tutorial videos
GarageBand - if you have a Mac this software comes free with the computer. It has all you need to create a podcast.
- You will need to compress your Audacity audio file into an mp3. You can use iTunes for this and the instuctions in iLounge are very good. This is the easiest way!
Converting to mp3 in iTunes in 10 easy steps!
1.) Drag wav file from desktop to a playlist in iTunes
2.) Right click on sound file, go to info and add title etc…
3.) Go to edit…preferences…advanced…importing
4.) Import Using: to mp3
5.) Setting: Custom, 64kbps
6.) Sample Rate: 22.050 KHz
7.) Channel: Mono
8.) Click OK to save changes.
9.) Now, right click on your audio file and “Convert Selection to mp3”
10.)Your new mp3 should be in your main library,
click and drag it back to the desktop
Download Copyright Safe Music
Tony Vincent has many links to sound loops and podsafe music on his site. There are many podsafe music sites out there. Just do a google search for "podsafe music" and have fun!
Publishing Your Podcast
To publish your podcast you need to post it to a web page. I use my class webpage from Freewebs. This is a very easy-to-use, free website service. Once your website is up and running all you need to do is upload your mp3 podcast to the site.
RadioPandaPride -here is a test example from my website
Syndicating Your Podcast
This is the trickiest part of podcasting. If you don't want to send it out to the world you can stop at just publishing your podcast to your website for parents and students to listen to. However, I believe that this step can be the most important and motivating to students because they truly will have a worldwide audience for the work they create, so I encourage you to stick with it!
What is RSS? -this article will explain syndication through an RSS feed. It is a complex concept.
Poderator makes it easy publish your podcast as it creates an RSS feed for you. Just enter the URL of your mp3 file on your website and they create the RSS feed! Now you can enter each new episode on poderator and it will automatically link up with you feed!
