mikes web log

Don’t know if anybody is interested. Here is my account of creating a podcast.

Podcasting – How to.
Not easy. But I’ll have a go at explaining how . It will be good experience.
 
Step1: Life is never easy.
I did think this was the most difficult step. Getting the children to record the material. As an experimental podcast I didn’t want to intrude on class time for the year 6 I was working with. SAT’s are only 8 weeks away! I needed to create the podcast and then I could use it as a convincing argument to get some class time. The kids were very enthusiastic and wrote loads of material. The trouble was finding the lunch times, playtimes, after school times, breakfast club time when I could get into the school to record their efforts.
 
Like others I used Audacity. Yet again I didn’t find this easy. I used a £4 stick mike and it probably shows in the final product. I think I will visit Maplins and purchase a slightly more expensive  device. Audacity has its funny quirks. You have to save your project before you can do anything with it. I was confused by the multi-track recording. After finishing this bit of blogging I might have a go at constructing a coherent set of notes on how to use it in its simplest form. Managed though and got to the MP3 stage.
 
Step 2  Inspiration
 
The inspiration for a podcast came from the Down’s school example. It’s brilliant. They have just tried their first vodcast. Again brilliant. I picked it up using iTunes. Go to Advanced and select Subscribe to Podcast type in http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheDownsFM. iTunes will automatically pick up the feed.
 
Step 4 First Stage of dispair
 
You have an MP3 file (5Mb for a 7 min. broadcast).Then what are feeds? What is RSS? A colleague helped immensely. The best way to establish a feed is to use a blog. No idea why? So I used the blogspot environment to establish another blog. http://princealbertpodcasts.blogspot.com.
 
When you have created the blog you start posting. It’s important that you set up the posting correctly because this influences the way in which the podcast is eventually displayed in iTunes. Took me a long time to sort this out. Create a title for the posting … in this instance it’s Podcast 1 for the Down’s school they used Series 2 – Show 1.  In the posting area you then type the brief description of the podcast. Select it all and then hyperlink the description to the place where you have placed the podcast. I choose a MyInternet PLUS homepage because of the size of uploads it can accommodate. I haven’t tried uploading to the blog (don’t think the blogspot blogging environment allows it).
 
Stage 3 More hopeful
 
You go to Feedburner at http://www.feedburner.com and create an account. Amazingly all free. There are some nice folks out there. When you go into Feedburner you are asked for your blogs address. Put it in and then click next. You are then asked to create your account. After that you have some details to fill in. Look at them carefully. At one point you are asked for details of your podcast. These details will appear in ITunes alongside the podcast title. Why careful? There seems no way back to edit these details. To my cost I had to delete the whole of the feed and start again because I missed this section and ended up with ‘Add here a detailed description…..’ next to my podcast title.
 
Stage 4  Finish
 
At the end you are presented with a feed address, a bit like the one in the link. This is what you feed into iTunes and lo and behold there is your podcast, hopefully all nicely setup and ready to go.