This section is an introduction to podcasting where we will discuss what, exactly, a podcast is and how they can benefit your students. Furthermore, we will discuss some of the different types of podcasts such as the simple audio podcast vs. an enhanced podcast with photos/video and how these might benefit your students.

Podcasting is, at its simplest form, the distribution of audio or video files over the internet. The term ‘podcast’ is actually an amalgam of the words ‘broadcast’ and the incredibly popular ‘iPod’ personal audio device. Podcasting was not something that was created by Apple, but actually was born on the internet as a way to deliver high quality audio/video content. One reason podcasting has become so popular is because it allows users to control when, where, and even how they view or listen to this material. Another is that it is incredibly simple for just about anyone with a computer, a few pieces of software, basic recording equipment and an internet connection to create their very own podcast.

Similarly, you can make available the content of your courses as podcasts (or coursecasts). This allows your students to take your lectures and other course material with them throughout the day for portable listening, or download it to their computer for later review.

At www.podcasts.vt.edu, a number of university podcasts are already available. These include the Distinguished Professor Series, Virginia Tech News, student events, a weekly technology review and even Financial Aid information. These are all part of Virginia Tech’s Invent the Future Campaign.

You may be asking yourself why anyone would want to podcast their lectures or other course content. The answer many have come up with is to make it easier for students to obtain and review your course materials. This can be especially useful for students speaking English as a second language or students with less background in a particular subject matter. Additionally, students can set the pace of the course for themselves, allowing those who wish to move more slowly to do so, and also allowing you to provide direction for students who wish to dig deeper.

In order to create your own podcast, here are some things you'll need to get you started:

Because of the low quality of built in microphones it is recommended that at least an external headset microphone be used for all recording. For higher quality audio, dedicated external microphones can be used in place of the external headset. Additionally it is recommended that a high speed network connection be used to reduce the time needed to transfer the large audio files.

In this section, we will discuss the installation of the software you will need to record your audio. Currently, the application of choice is Audacity as it is a fully-featured audio editor that is also cross-platform and freeware. Audacity provides a robust and complete recording and editing solution with a simple interface for the novice user.

Download the most recent stable version, in this case, 1.2.4b. You will also need to download and install the LAME mp3 Encoder so that you can export your recordings to mp3.

Once you have installed Audacity to your computer, open the lame-3.96.1.zip and place the uncompressed folder somewhere that it will not get deleted. Remember where you put this folder as you will need to navigate back to it once you run Audacity for the first time and setup the mp3 export option.

Once you have installed Audacity to your computer, open the LameLib-Carbon-3.91.sit and place the LameLib file somewhere that it will not get deleted. Remember where you put this file as you will need to navigate back to it once you run Audacity for the first time and setup the mp3 export option.

Before Recording: Audacity Set-up

Make sure your microphone and headphones are plugged into the PC. Launch Audacity and check to see that Microphone is selected in the drop-down menu on the tool bar for the recording source.

Now, from the menu bar up top, select File then Audacity Preferences. In the window this brings up, select the Audio I/O tab. Make sure that your sound card is selected for the Playback and the Recording device. Also, under Recording there is the Channels drop-down box, select 1 (Mono).

Now select the Quality tab and select 44,100 Hz for the Default Sample Rate and 16-bit for the Default Sample Format. These quality settings will work fine for recording voice in mp3 format.

Select the File Formats tab. In the drop-down box under Uncompressed Export Format, select WAV (Microsoft 16 bit PCM). Select the Find Library button and browse to the location of the LAME codec (lame_enc.dll) that you extracted and add it. Set the MP3 Bit Rate to 64 in the drop down menu if the audio will only consist of a voice. If music or other audio files will be used along with voice, leave the Bit Rate at 128. Once these settings are set, click OK to exit the Audacity Preferences window.

Recording

First, the microphone needs to be adjusted for your recording session. In Audacity's Meter toolbar select the microphone icon. You should see the audio monitor come up. As you make noise you will see the red bar move up and down. While talking into the microphone, adjust the volume so that the bar travels as far to the right as it can go with out causing the end section to turn red. If this happens your audio will sound distorted, and if set too low, the audio will be quiet. Now you can record.

To begin recording, press the red record button and speak into your microphone. You can pause the recording at any time by pressing the blue pause button; press the pause button again to resume. When you finish recording press the yellow stop button.

To save the file, at the top select File and Save Project As…. When naming the file, it is recommended to name the file with relevance to the contents of the audio file or lecture (i.e. Lec01_abcdefg.aup). The project will be saved as an .aup file. It is important to save the file immediately after you record to ensure that the recording does not get lost and/or if it is edited incorrectly there is still a source file.

After saving the project, the file can be edited. Using the audio control tool bar, (same as above) you can listen to the audio file that was created. By simply highlighting areas in the audio and pressing the delete you can remove audio where there maybe long pauses, coughing, and etc. As shown here the desired area is highlighted and about 1 second of audio is deleted.

Once your audio file is exactly how you like it, you must save it in MP3 format. To do this, select File and then Export As MP3… and save the .mp3 file to your desired directory folder. It is recommended that you name the file the same as the first save; the two files will be different due to their file extensions (.aup and .mp3). The ID3 tag window will appear and this is where the files details are entered.

Suggestions are as follows:

• Title > Lecture Name
• Artist > Your Name
• Album > Class

The other boxes you may leave blank or fill if you like. When you are finished, click OK.

You have successfully made a recording in MP3 format!

Installing FTP Software

First you will need FTP software to be able to upload your podcast file. The software that you will need to download and install is at this location (click link).

Click the download icon next to FileZilla (not the BETA or Server Version). Now you will see a list of files to choose from, select the FileZilla setup.exe file to download. Once selected you will see a window pop up to save the file. Save the installer to your desktop or to another location that you are familiar with on your computer. Now navigate to the file you downloaded and run the installer. The default settings for the installer are fine so click next and ok until the installation is complete.

Uploading the Podcast

On the desktop you should see a shortcut now to run FileZilla; run it. To configure FileZilla, you will need to enter the server address for your username and password. If you do not know this information please contact your department system administrator or support@iddl.vt.edu.

Once you are logged in, the file(s) can be uploaded easily:

• First, navigate to the location of the file you want to upload on the left side of the window.
• Second, navigate to where you want to place the file on the right hand side of the window.
• Third, move the file from your computer to the server (left to right) by copying and pasting or by simply clicking and dragging. Once the transfer is finished, the upload is complete.

Distribution

This section covers how to setup podcast distribution. First, go to www.poderator.com. On this page you will see a login that requires an e-mail address and password. If you do not have an account setup with Poderator, then you need to click ‘register’ and it will take you to a page where you fill out some basic information a click ‘create account’ when finished. Once you have an account you will be able to login on the Poderator home page. Enter your email address and password and click ‘sign in’ to proceed.

Now you are looking at the podcast details page. The first three boxes (as shown below) are the required important fields. It is recommended that for the podcast title the course name is used. The website URL is the location of the folder that the file you created was uploaded to using FileZilla. The podcast description should be brief describing what the course podcast contain. The remaining optional boxes can be filled however you desire or left blank. When finished, click ‘save this episode’ at the bottom of the page.

The next screen you come to is similar to the previous one, but this one is the details for the individual podcast that you are adding. For the episode title it is recommended to name it the name of the lecture or by number to give it organization and some structure. The episode description would just be a brief description of the lecture. The episode URL is the location and including the file that was uploaded. The file type is simply the type of file that is being accessed, you can tell by the extension (i.e. .mp3). Last the episode file size which allows the user to know how big of a file they will be downloading before they begin. This information can be obtained by right clicking on the file and going to properties. Next to ‘size:’ it will say how large the file is in bytes. Again the rest of the information is optional. When finished, click ‘save this episode’ at the bottom of the page.

After saving, you will return to a similar screen but you will notice on the right hand side that an episode will be added under Podcast Episodes.

Now that the podcast episode is listed, scroll down to the bottom of the page and click Publish your XML feed. The following page comes up as shown below. On this page select Download your XML feed.

You will be prompt to save or open the xml file, save it. Saving it to the desktop is recommended since it will be moved. Just as before you will need to run FileZilla and upload the xml file to the same location as the mp3 file. Once the file is uploaded rename it to whatever you desire or makes sense, such as the lecture name. The xml file’s exact location is the URL that you will need to give to the people that you want to have access to the file.