PodCasting
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Examples
Example Podcast Show
http://thomcochrane.podOmatic.com/
http://thomcochrane.podOmatic.com/rss2.xml
Audio PodCast
Download an audio Podcast (http://ltxserver.unitec.ac.nz/~thom/QuickTime/ACILITE_Podcast.m4a) of a conference (ASCILITE) presentation.
A ScreenCast of my favourite Wireless Palm LifeDrive applications!
Click here (http://ltxserver.unitec.ac.nz/~thom/movies/PalmLifeDriveScreenCast_final.mov) to view .
(Note this is an 25MB QuickTime (http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download) movie)
A Video Podcast of my favourite Wireless Palm LifeDrive applications!
Click here (http://ltxserver.unitec.ac.nz/~thom/movies/PalmLifeDriveScreenCast_final.m4v) to view/download the screencast formatted for the iPod Video.
(Note this is an 9.5MB QuickTime (http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download) movie)
Film Noir Reviews
http://outofthepast.libsyn.com/
San Fransico Museum of Modern Art
http://www.sfmoma.org/education/edu_podcasts.html
Definitions
Podcasts are RSS feeds that contain media, not just text. E.G. audio, video, images etc... Podcasts can be downloaded over the Internet to a media player such as the iPod, then listened to or viewed at the users discretion.
PodCasting was nominated as the 'word of the year' for 2005!
In generic terms - it is Personal Broadcasting
"With its roots in the blogging world, part of the appeal of podcasting is the ease with which audio content can be created, distributed, and downloaded from the Web. Professional broadcasters and syndicated radio shows are starting to make their content available as podcasts. Amateurs are flocking to podcasting, sharing their content and opinions. Campuses are starting to make content available as podcasts as well."
(Educause, 2005) (http://www.educause.edu/LibraryDetailPage/666?ID=ELI7003)
pdf link (http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7003.pdf)
PodCasting is: A method for delivering audio and video over the Internet. A standard podcast consists of an MP3 file uploaded to the web for listeners to download and listen to on a computer or portable MP3 player. The name comes from the Apple iPod, arguably the most popular portable audio player. The difference between an ordinary MP3 and a podcast is that the podcast is set up to be accessed via an RSS feed, whether from your site, the iTunes site, or some other RSS host/directory server. A podcast differs from streaming audio in which a file plays back from a server. With podcasting, the listener downloads the MP3 or MOV file onto their computer. The listener can then play it whenever convenient on his or her computer, or choose to transfer it to their audio player to listen while on the go.
- Podcasting is an extension to RSS that allows you to link and download media files directly.
- The latest version of iTunes software supports Podcasts and works on both Macs and PCs.
- Podcasting derives its name from the iPod phenomenum
- Virtual iPod – Podcasting examples
http://www.potkast.com/preview/index.php
(Uses Flash)
For more info, see Wikipedia: Podcasting
[1] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podcasting)
The Wikipedia offers an extensive article on the
history and current state of podcasting, including
links to examples, tutorials, and discussion
about the topic.
PodCasting and Education
The Apple iPod phenomena has revolutionized the way people listen to their favourite music. iPods are also finding their way into educational contexts.
"PodCasting allows students to use their technology-based entertainment systems (iPods, MP3 players) for educational experiences. Because students are already familiar with the underlying technology, podcasting broadens educational options in a nonthreatening and easilly accessible manner. For example, podcasting allows lectures or other course content to be made available to students if they miss class. Beyond missed lectures, podcasting can provide access to experts through interviews. Podcasting is not limited to content delivery to the student, however; students can create their own podcasts - as a record of activities, a way to collect notes, or a reflection on what they have learned." (Educause 2005)
The 2006 Horizon Report (http://www.educause.edu/LibraryDetailPage/666?ID=ELI0609) (Alexander et al, 2006) lists personal broadcasting (i.e. PodCasting) as a current technology within tertiary education - rather than an emerging one!
One example of a University exploiting the potential of PodCasting in Tertiary Education is Stanford University.
Check out Stanford on iTunes! (http://itunes.stanford.edu/).
Duke University has issued free iPods to all first year students! [2] (http://www.chronicle.duke.edu/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/08/20/412620dfa7d23) - every Freshman student has been given an iPod for the past two years! Duke have learnt that the technology must be integrated into the teaching for it to be a success - simply supplying students with the hardware and access is not enough to produce educational gains.
Apple Computer have recently recognized the educational market for PodCasting, and following on from trials with the likes of Stanford University, are establishing the iTunes U [3] (http://www.apple.com/education/solutions/itunes_u/). Unfortunately this is currently only available to USA universities :-(
e.g. University of Michigan (http://www.apple.com/education/profiles/michigan_dentistry/index2.html)
Learning Circuits (http://www.learningcircuits.org/2005/jun2005/0506_trends) have a nice outline of the educational potential of PodCasts.
Uni of Missouri White Paper (http://edmarketing.apple.com/adcinstitute/wp-content/Missouri_Podcasting_White_Paper.pdf) overview of PodCasting - PDF - see excert below.
Subscribing to PodCasts
Hardware
[4] (http://www.apple.com/ipod/)
One of the easiest and most integrated approaches to downloading and playing podcasts is of course the iPod (http://www.apple.com/ipod)
However, you can download and listen to podcasts on a large variety of devices. The main limitation is the compression format compatibility. Podcasts use compression techniques to keep the file size and download times low. My preferred compression codec for Podcasts is the AAC format, not mp3 (because it creates higher quality results with smaller file sizes - the mp3 format is actually very old). However most modern mobile devices are capable of playing back both mp3 and AAC format files. AAC podcasts and screencasts (podcast with video) play back great on Palm PDA, as well as an iPod, a Mac or a PC.
PS - the other reason I used AAC format rather than mp3 is to subvert our IT department! - they have packet-shaped mp3 downloads out of our network - to stop students files sharing mp3s, but AAC format files get through fine ;-)
Software
Once again - the simplest solution is to use Apple Computer's iTunes software, as it has builtin support for subscribing to and downloading PodCasts, and for managing them.
iTunes is a free download (http://www.apple.com/itunes/download) for Mac or PC from the Apple website.
On the Palm PDA platform, QuickNews (http://www.standalone.com/palmos/quick_news/) is a great RSS reader that also supports podcast downloading.
iPodder.org (http://www.ipodder.org/directory/4/ipodderSoftware) has links to various software for Mac, PC, Linux, PocketPC, and SmartPhones.
Creating a PodCast
Podcasting is now so popular, companies like M-Audio are producing Podcasting solutions! Podcasting Factory (http://www.m-audio.com/index.php?do=products.article&ID=8776ea34743cd11afd26f2a3e1de6184)
Hardware
A simple podcast can be recorded directly into an ipod with a microphone adaptor. However, you will most likely want to do some basic editing of your podcast, so recording your podcast on a computer allows for the most flexibilty in editing.
For computer-based recording you will need:
- Quality microphone
- Pop Guard
- Audio interface for your computer (builtin hardware is usually low quality)
- A computer
- Software
- Headphones
Microphones are an essential device for recording audio and converting acoustic signals into electrical signals that are then converted to digital words for manipulation by a computer.
Appropriate choice of microphone type, and microphone placement, will ensure the best reproduction of the sound. A manufacturer of cost-effective quality microphones is Rode (http://www.rode.com.au).
Software
Audio recording and editing software comes in a range of complexities and prices! This is also the area of most divergence between the Mac and PC platforms, as there are great software solutions that run only on one or other platform. The following is a suggested list of software for recording/editing for Mac, PC, and both.
Recording/editing software that works on both mac & PC:
- Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/)
- QuickTime Pro (http://www.apple.com/quicktime/tutorials/podcasting.html)
- Cubase SX (http://www.steinberg.de)
- ProTools (http://www.digidesign.com)
Recommended recording/editing software that works only on Mac:
- GarageBand (http://www.apple.com/ilife/garageband/features/podcasts.html)
- SoundTrack Pro
- Logic Express
- Logic Pro
- iMovie - for screencasts
- SnapzPro - for screencasts
Recommended recording/editing software that works only on PC:
- PodcastStation (http://www.podcaststation.com)
- Adobe Audition (http://www.adobe.com/products/audition/main.html)
- Pinnacle Studio 10 - for screencasts
Sharing via iTunes
The simplest way to start sharing your Podcasts is to use the local network sharing capability of iTunes. Simply by selecting the 'share' option in your iTunes software preferences, anyone on the same network running iTunes will see your iTunes library as a shared library that they can join and listen to!
MyTunesRSS
I'm impressed! A free platform independent app for streaming iTunes libraries across a network or the internet to any device that supports RSS feeds! I got it working without a problem streaming iTunes from my Powerbook to my PSP. The only 'hard' bit was turning off the software firewall on port 8080 to allow the streaming traffic thru.
Example MyTunesRSS Server: http://203.110.5.250:8080/mytunesrss/
Download for free from: http://www.codewave.de/products/mytunesrss/
" MyTunesRSS is an application for accessing your iTunes library from any computer connected through a network. You can browse and search your library with any browser, use existing playlists or create new ones. From all this data you can create RSS feeds or M3U playlists in your browser and use them with appropriate programs. So you can play your iTunes tracks on today's clients like the Playstation Portable.
MyTunesRSS is a GUI for configuring and starting a server and a web application. When the server is running, you can access the web application with a browser. The web application is password protected, so only you can access it.
You can browse your library by album or artist and you can search for tracks. Besides the exisiting iTunes playlists you can create new ones from the browser. You can create RSS feeds or M3U playlists from any album, tracks of an artist or a playlist. You can also simply download tracks, e.g. for getting them on your Playstation Portable without a USB link. Applications like VLC for example can also get streams from videos in your library.
Since MyTunesRSS is pure Java, you can run it on any platform supporting Java 1.5 and iTunes.
You can download MyTunesRSS for free and use it as long as you wish."
Sharing via the Internet
To reach a larger audience, you need to upload your podcasts to an Internet Server that supports RSS feeds for subscription. Strictly speaking, you don't need an RSS feed from your Podcast for other people to download it - all they need is the address of the podcast file on a publically available web site. However, for 'subscribers' to be automatically updated with new podcasts as they are uploaded, an RSS feed is the way to go.
An RSS feed is simply an xml file, and can be created manually using a plain text editor, but this can be labourious. Here's an article that explains how to manually create an RSS feed using a text editor: How to create an RSS feed (http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/website/view.cgi?dbs=Article&key=1059503386). The main difference between a standard RSS newsfeed, and a podcast feed is the 'enclosure' tag which lets an RSS aggregator automatically download the podcast files.
RSS feed creation has been integrated into the latest version of GarageBand, and Apples new website editor - iWeb (http://www.apple.com/ilife/iweb/). Another simple application including RSS feed generation for Podcasts is Rapidweaver (http://www.realmacsoftware.com/rapidweaver/index.php).
For PC, PodcastStation (http://www.podcaststation.com/WebPages/home.html) is a very nice integrated application that will produce RSS feeds.
An online form for generating the xml code for an RSS feed can be found at:
http://www.tdscripts.com/webmaster_utilities/podcast-generator.php
Another popular solution is Feedburner (http://www.feedburner.com).
Example xml code for an rss feed:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<rss version="2.0">
<channel>
<title>Wireless PDAs in Education</title>
<link>http://ltxserver.unitec.ac.nz/~thom</link>
<description>Overview of Wireless possibilities, and Learning Objects</description>
<language>en-us</language>
<copyright>Thom Cochrane 2005</copyright>
<lastBuildDate>Tue, 14 Mar 2006 04:14:50 GMT</lastBuildDate>
<generator>tdscripts.com Podcast Generator</generator>
<webMaster>tcochrane@unitec.ac.nz</webMaster>
<ttl>1</ttl>
<item>
<title>ASCILITE presentation 2005</title>
<description>Audio podcast of ASCILITE 2005 presentation</description>
<pubDate>Tue, 14 Mar 2006 04:14:50 GMT</pubDate>
<enclosure url="http://ltxserver.unitec.ac.nz/~thom/QuickTime/ACILITE_Podcast.m4a" length="8900000" type="audio/mpeg"/>
</item>
</channel>
</rss>
To make a PodCast work on the Internet, you need:
- Server space to 'host' your podcast files
- An RSS feed that points to your podcast files
- Podcast capable player
PodCast Hosting
options for hosting your Podcasts include:
- Your own Internet accessible web server
- A blog host that supports podcasts e.g. Odeo (http://www.odeo.com/account/signup), or ccpublisher (http://creativecommons.org/tools/ccpublisher)
- Free Podcast Host - e.g. http://www.podomatic.com or http://www.odeo.com
- A commercial web hosting service that supports podcasts & RSS
e.g. dotMac (http://www.mac.com/) (free trial for 2 months, then $127.94 + GST for 12 months for 1GB space). Note - works with Mac & PC
libsyn (https://www.libsyn.com/) (plans start at $5 US per month for 100MB space, to $30 US for 800MB space)
Examples:
To subscribe to these examples using iTunes, copy the url & paste into the 'subscribe to podcast' option under the 'Advanced' menu in iTunes.
- Podcast feed hosted on ltxserver (http://ltxserver.unitec.ac.nz/~thom/QuickTime/rss.xml)
- Podcast Feed hosted on dotMac Site (http://homepage.mac.com/thom_cochrane/TCdotMac/files/page0.xml)
- PodOmatic (http://thomcochrane.podomatic.com/rss2.xml)
Enhanced Podcasts
Enhanced Podcasts include visual material (images, pdfs, video tracks) and/or website links as part of the podcast file. A popular form of enhanced Podcast is a 'Screencast' - where a movie of events occuring on a computer monitor are annotaed with an audio podcast - great for software tutorials!
There are plenty of enhanced podcast tools around - some free, or cheap, some expensive :-)
Recommended for Mac:
- ChapterTool (http://homepage.mac.com/applepodcast/podcasts/Resources/static/podcast_chapter_tool_beta.dmg)
- ChapterToolMe (http://www.rbsoftware.net/?page=ctm)
- GarageBand3 (http://www.apple.com/ilife/garageband)
- iPodderX (http://transistr.com/)
- SoundTrack Pro (http://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/soundtrackpro/)
Recommended for PC:
- PodcastStation (http://www.podcaststation.com)
Nike Plus
Apple & Nike have teamed up to give you direct feedback between Nike shoes & your iPod!!! You need iTunes v 6.05
Podcasting using VOX Collections
The steps involved in creating a PodCast Show using VOX (http://www.vox.com) and the iTunes Store (http://www.apple.com/itunes/store/) are:
- Record your Podcast show episode and convert to either mp3 or mp4 (aac, m4a).
- Upload
your audio file (Podcast episode) to your Vox blog - either as a post
attachment or upload directly into your Vox 'Audio' folder in your Vox
Library. - Create a 'Collection' in Vox and name it - e.g. 'My Podcast Show'.
- Add
your Podcast Episode to your Podcast 'Collection' in Vox - note
providing a description and tag words will make it easier for listeners
to search for your Podcast show and categorize it! - Find your Vox Podcast Collection RSS feed and copy it.
- It will be in the form: <a href="http://thomcochrane.vox.com/podcast-show/atom.xml">http://thomcochrane.vox.com/podcast-show/atom.xml</a>
- i.e. http://yourvoxname.vox.com/yourvoxcollectionname/atom.xml
- Open
iTunes, choose 'Advanced', 'Subscribe to Podcast' and paste your
Podcast RSS feed - iTunes will then download and play your Podcast show
episodes! - Share your iTunes Podcast Playlist (and your RSS feed) with the rest of the class!
- <a href="http://www.apple.com/itunes/store/podcaststechspecs.html" target="_new" title="Podcast instructions">To get your Podcast show on iTunes</a>:
- Submit your Shows RSS feed to iTunes
- Launch iTunes.
- In the left navigation column, under iTunes Store, click on the Podcasts link to go to the Podcasts page.
- In the left column of the Podcasts page, in the Learn More box at the bottom, click on the Submit a Podcast link.
- Follow the instructions on the <a href="https://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZFinance.woa/wa/publishPodcast">Submit a Podcast</a> page.
- Note that you will need a valid iTunes account, and you will need to be logged into iTunes.
- You will receive a confirmation email from Apple.
<a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/thomcochrane/VOXPodcasting/photo#s5205945520885640946">View slideshow of screenshots.</a>
Tutorial Exercises
- Use iTunes to listen to a shared audio library over the network
- Record a short audio podcast using QuickTime Pro, then export it as an mp4 file
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/tutorials/podcasting.html
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/tutorials/ - Create a free account on http://www.podomatic.com
- Upload your podcast to your Podomatic.com account
- Locate the RSS feed for your podcast on Podomatic.com
- Share your Podcast RSS feed urlwith each other
- Subscribe & listen to each others podcasts using iTunes
Notes:
The address of your podcast RSS feed will be: http://username.podomatic.com/rss2.xml, e.g. http://thomcochrane.podomatic.com/rss2.xml
Bibliography
Alexander, B., Brown, M., Doogan, V., Johnson, L., Levine, A., Sabean, R., et al. (2006). The horizon report 2006 edition: A collaboration between The New Media Consortium and the Educause Learning Initiative.
Educause. (2005). Podcasting. 7 Things You Should Know About., 2005, from http://www.educause.edu/LibraryDetailPage/666?ID=ELI7003
