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In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed
- Charles Darwin

 

Links to Friends...

Greybeards - My husband's mathematics site

thericeschool.org - my school site. I'm the webmaster but there is so much here about K12 teachning

Martyd.com - my commercial site

Jombiestuff.com - buy the Jombie Towel for your athletic activities.

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BFOIT Programming - Guy Haas developed this curriculum which I use with my programming class.

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Audio! Podcasting!

About this page

This page covers all you need to know to begin podcasting and sound editing on PC's. It's broken into sections because it's so long.

The Stuff You'll Needtop

To begin, you need some software - all of what you need is free. If you find that this is something you want to get into more deeply you may want to invest in some commercial product - still it is very reasonable.

The software:
The Hardware:
Other:

The Processtop

Audio

The first part of creating your podcast is pretty straight-forward. Simply create a short informative audio or audio and video file using whatever tool you choose. Here is an excellent tutorial on doing an audio podcast in Audacity. When you finish your recording edit test audio at the beginning or other glitches and export your file as an mp3. When your audio is done and saved, you will need to know:

  1. Where you saved it so you can upload it later
  2. What the exact file size is. To figure that out - right click on the .mp3 file you created and click “properties” and note the size. Write down the number of bytes without any commas.

Create an enhanced podcast with Powerpoint and Photostorytop

  1. Create the slides you will use in Powerpoint
  2. Save the slides as jpegs using "save as"
  3. Open Photostory and import the slides you saved as your images
  4. Follow the directions in Photostory to add narration and music
  5. Save the file and then convert to mp4 using Jodix, Quick Media Converter, or Media Coder
 
Video

There are a number of video options.

  1. Use Photostory to create a video of still images, background music, and narration.
  2. Use CamStudeo or Jing to create a movie of your computer screen and narration.
  3. Use a video camera. For Internet video, use a miniDV cam that captures 720 x 480-pixel footage. The built-in mike on your videocam is usually too far to get good audio. If you can, use a $25 tie-clip model from some place like RadioShack.
  4. Use flash memory camcorder such as a Flip - it can transfer video to a computer more quickly via USB, but picture quality can be variable.
  5. Depending on the look you want it's good to put your camera on a tripod or a flat surface.
Convert to MP3 or MP4

Audio files need to be in an MP3 format. You can export your audio files in Audacity in an MP3 format (if you downloaded the Lame encoder). Video files need to be in an MP4 format. You can use Jodix, Quick Media Converter, or Media Coder to do this.

A place to put your podcast... and Sending an RSS to the World...top

You need 2 things - first a place to put your audio/video file and second a way to get the message out that you are podcasting. If you are not podcasting regularly, you really only need the first.

Ideas for hosting
  1. If you or your school already has a website, you can put your podcast there.
  2. Free hosting sites exist such as mypodcast or mymedia. Another option is to use a free webhosting site that allows mp3 files.
  3. There are low cost solutions that run about $5 per month. libsyn is one example.
RSS and XML
  1. Once you have your hosting sorted out then you can use Blogger and Feedburner to do the rss. The above link is to a tutorial that explains the process.
  2. You can also use the DIY approach.

*RSS, XML, and Hosting your own podcast.

Here is a great video at Teacher Tube that explains RSS

Regular podcasts use RSS Feeds to let the world know a new podcast is available. An RSS feed is a file that must be updated every time a new podcast is created.

This is an XML file which contains a description of the program. You need to create a special xml file, validate it, and then submit your podcast to Itunes if it's going to be a regular show... If you don't want to learn how to do this yourself by hand then use a program to create your rss feed (that special xml file). A free one is Podcast Generator - Open Source Podcast Publishing.

It's also important to validate your rss feed. If it's not exactly right then it won't work.

Sample RSS feed

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<rss version="2.0">
<channel>
  <title>Title of Feed Goes Here</title>
  <description>Description of Feed Goes Here</description>
  <link>Link to the Feed Goes Here</link>
  <item>
    <title>Title of Podcast Goes Here</title>
    <description>Description of Podcast</description>
    <link>Link to Podcast</link>
 <guid>Link to Podcast</guid>
 <enclosure url="Link to Podcast" type="audio/mpeg"
length="file size in bytes" />
  </item>
</channel>
</rss>

Audio Linkstop

Here are some sites for podsafe music:
Sound effects
Music
Search Tools for Sounds
Public Domain Wav files of Patriotic and other musictop