A Windows PC running XP/2000 or an Apple Mac G4/G5/Intel running OSX

A minimum of 64mb of RAM and 300 mhz processor

A sound card

A microphone (external microphones are recommended); headphones with a mic will work, although a higher quality microphone will yield better results

A working internet connection with a current web browser such as Internet Explorer, Firefox or Safari

Recording software: Audacity is recommended as it is FREE, fully featured for editing and compression and available for PC and Mac; for Mac users, Garageband (part of Apple's iLife suite) is also an option and offers a more complete solution

For video or enhanced podcasts, the recommended solution for PC users is Camtasia. For Mac users, iMovie and Garageband both work very well for editing and production of enhanced podcasts

You will need space on a web server; whether departmental or personal, you will need to host these files somewhere. You can also place this file on Blackboard, but at this time, there is no integration with RSS and no automatic downloads for your students

FTP software for transferring your completed recording to a web server; WS-FTP LE for PC's and Fugu for Mac users are recommended programs, but you are certainly not limited to these applications. You can also use the FTP function built into Internet Explorer for managing files

For creating an RSS feed, Poderator offers a great free solution that only requires a simple account registration