My podcasting experience went pretty well. In order to really understand the technical process, which I was admittedly nervous about, I decided to create a brief podcast that introduced new high school students and their parents to my course, Computer Graphics Technology.
After using Audacity to record the audio file of my podcast, I began browsing appropriate audio that I already had on my computer. I ended up choosing “” to be set to play at the beginning of my podcast. After editing for awhile, I had my complete audio file synced and saved as an MP3. Having literally zero experience with Ocean, I tried not to be hesitant about diving in. After getting iTech to set up my account, I tried downloading WinSCP on my work computer, but was unsuccessful. This was a little bothersome, as I try to do a lot of my graduate schoolwork after workdays in my classroom, rather than working on it at home. I ended up getting WinSCP to load on my personal laptop, and began trying to figure it out.
After about an hour, I decided to give David a call to see if I was on the right track. I’d figured out a good bit, but used his valuable assistance to really finish the project. After testing my RSS feed and found it successful, I really felt accomplished! I don’t have a large amount of Web design experience, so I was almost intimidated at the thought of working with Ocean, but with David’s help, I was able to finish it up in a very timely manner! As I told David, I’d set aside 2 weekend days to work on the project, and ended up only spending about 3 hours on recording, editing, uploading, subscribing. I was impressed with how easy it was to establish an RSS feed, as it seemed like it would be pretty difficult “at first glance.”
I’d used iTunes a good bit with my iPhone, but hadn’t ever done much “exploring.” I didn’t realize the Podcast channel capability and how easy it is to subscribe to one. As a high school teacher, I think podcasting would be a helpful tool for many purposes– exam review, reflections (posts made by students), and lesson recaps. I would be most likely to record a lecture and post it to the class site for access by an absent student who needs to make up classwork. I don’t do a terribly large amount of lecturing, though, so I think I’d have to get creative if I were to incorporate a large amount of podcasting into my classroom. Possibly a student-created podcast (individually or maybe a partner/group-collaborative effort) would be a fun, effective way of using podcasting in my classroom.
This is the link to my RSS feed created for podcasting purposes.
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April 8, 2010 at 2:28 pm
davidsmora
Lindsey,
I was glad to help with this assignment! Before taking this class, I really didn’t know what podcasting was. While I had heard of this term (casually in conversations), I didn’t know how powerful podcasting could be.
I also agree that podcasting can be a very innovative and useful tool for educators. Teachers could create podcasts of their lectures for students who miss class or want to refresh their knowledge.
May 2, 2010 at 8:45 pm
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May 3, 2010 at 9:46 pm
itjil
It would be awesome to have students create podcasts in groups…kind of a radio show about a certain topic or something. I had a bit of experience with podcasting before. I used to do a weekly photoshop screencast tutorial, but as with most of my projects, it got negated by work and school and life in general 🙂 I’m glad that David helped you out. There are some easier ways to make RSS feeds, but I am impressed that Dr. Yuen had everyone write the code in notepad like the good old days! It really is the best way to learn exactly how it works. I didnt use ocean….I had enough of it in undergrad! Ugh! If you start using podcasts with your class, I’d love to know it. I’d like to comment on them. LOL Fun stuff.