At last I have bitten the bullet and have purchased some of my own web space. This was mainly due to the vodcasting saga and the limit on uploading to n the virtual learning environment web space that I had somehow inherited. And I have my own domain name www.mikefarmer.me.uk. Wow. Don’t bother to go there as I have yet to work out how to use it. I didn’t realise how easy it was to join the club.
Here we are again. How do you vodcast? Notice I have changed from vidcast….I have learn’t the new vocabulary, there is the odd occasion when I listen. I look back at my podcasting problems and lo and behold the same things seem to be happening with vodcasting. Here I am with a delightful set of photographs and some children talking about there visit to the Birmingham Botanical Gardens and I cannot vodcast it.
I’ve had the best brains in the book looking at it. He spent two hours last week, came to a solution and ……. it didn’t work. Downs have done it why can’t I? Here I am with an mp4 file, an m4v file (same as Downs), an .mov file and nothing seems to work. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Why does ITunes pick up Down’s m4v file but not mine? Why does ITunes pick up my .mov file but not play it? Why?. Why?. Is it because Down’s uses Mac technology while I am still tied to the PC environment?
This is a real life drama. You have to beat the bugger. There must be a way around the problem.
I have been her before and here I am again. Ambition has led me to try and produce my first vodcast. It’s a video cast so why is it called a vodcast and not a vidcast? This is something that needs a little bit of investigation. The vodcast is linked to the previous post where year4 visited the Birmingahm Botanical Gardens. They took photographs and then talked about them. The result was fantastic, the problem was how to vodcast them.
I suspect vodcasting with a Mac is a doddle (shall I buy one, shall I not,shall I buy one, shall I not,shall I buy one, shall I not…….). Try using video editing software on a PC! I say this because of the superb Downs FM vodcasts. maybe one day we will be able to equal them.
Where were we? Nowhere, the vodcast was created with Windows Moviemaker and then converted to a variety of different file formats which should have been encapsulated by the blogger account but were not. The blogger account did encapsulate a .mov file however it couldn’t be played within Itunes. A .mpv4 file was not recognised by Itunes. It did recognise a small mp4 file but this was only 20s of a 4.22 minute file which was to big to be uploaded to my preferred location. It just goes on and on.
I have put brilliant people on the task of finding the solution…I really cannot afford a Mac. And one might have appeared. It might be with the original setup of Feedburner. Did I set it to ignore video feed? Maybeeeeeeeeeee a solution is near. If so thanks Keith.
Had a great brainstorming(thought showering) session with Jay and Deborah at the Botanical Gardens. How can podcasting augment the work of the gardens?
How about
- Podcasts of visitors talking about the gardens
- Podcasts for pupils coming into the gardens -sub-themed for different age groups.
- Vid casts of special plants and habitats which they can access before they arrive.
- Themed podcasts – the medicinal podcasts – conservation podcasts.
- Podcasts of trail around the gardens
- The gardeners talking about their areas of the gardens.
-The Green Man podcasts
These could all be different subscription items made up of small manageable chunks podcasts will. There is a botanical garden in Melbourne that has one substantial podcast that takes you on a tour of the gardens. A bit big (30 minutes) for my liking. The Birmingham Botanical Gardens podcasts will be short and sweet and make the listener WANT to visit the gardens.
A great opportunity has arisen linked to two of my present focii. We are at the present time beginning to expand the ‘Computers in Homes’ project into Year 4 at two of the project primary schools. A total of 150 families.
Year 4 in Prince Albert primary are visiting Birmingham Botanical Gardens on 7th/8th November to look at different habitats. This gives me a great opportunity of a podcast with PICTURES. We will get the children to take photographs of the plants and then record them talking about them. What a wonderful resource to share with their parents.
Podcasting photographs can use the facilities of Windows Movie Maker. Create the audio file using Audacity and then drop it into Movie Maker. The still images can then be dropped into the video section. The whole thing can then be published as a file that can be succesfully podcasted. Look out for the instructions …..and problems and evaluation.
I have just finished working with colleagues on an instruction sheet on podcasting and out of interest I was just looking at a few other sites. Came across the Education Podcast network and for ‘fun’ looked at the American Society for Microbiology. They have a set of 90 second podcasts on different subjects and I learned something new from each of the five I visited. Its a brilliant example of what you can do in 90 seconds.
Looking at it another way. How long do you wait at a set of red traffic lights. Maximum 30 seconds. Try it. I wish life was as long. Introduction_to_Podcastingv2.doc
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.
Go to I tunes. Go to Podcasts and then Advanced on the top bar. Go to Subscribe an add the link http://feeds.feedburner.com/The PrinceAlbertPodcasts.
Im not a tecci. I am an enthusiast. This causes me immense problems. Podcasting is the present problem.Podcasting is a brilliant concept. It allows the podcaster to do so many things which could be of immense educational value. Schools can export their excellence. Pupils can perform in a variety of ways. Teachers can use it for teaching. It has the potential of being a very powerful tool. Is it ready for general use. No way.
The kids did the most difficult bit. they produced the podcast material then performed it. Brilliant. Recording with Audacity was almost OK - although Audacity has its quirks and does need some previewing. In the end the production of the MP3 file was relatively easy.
How do you now convert this to a podcast. Firstly one has to grasp the concept of an RSS feed. Really Simple Syndication……Simple, simple….what on earth is simple about this. Apparently a podcast needs this so how do you fix it. Simple, you go to somebody who knows! My colleague was brilliant and produced a set of notes that took me through the process of making this wonderful MP3 file into a podcast. Firstly you need to create an XML feed (What is an XML feed – never mind …maybe I don’t need to know). To do this you can create a post within your blogger account. Great I had one, this one, maybe I could use that. Maybe this was a really good use of a blogger account! In the posting you create a link to the MP3 file. Brilliant can do that. Next step please.
Go to FeedBurner. Why. What is Feedburner? You register and then create a feed address. you then choose a Chicklet. Is this a new word for the Oxford Dictionary? When you create it you are not really sure what it does and it involves changing the settings of your blog. Which you cannot do with this blog. So maybe you need another blog. So back to the beginning however was that necessary? Who knows.
Eventually you end up with a couple of addresses that could be fed into Itunes so that it can receive you podcast.
When is somebody going to make this a single button job. Come on you out there help the likes of me. We don’t need to go through this mess. This is a wonderful tool it meets all sorts of educational objectives make it happen for us.
This will be the first of a series of podcasts from Prince Albert Primary School in Aston England. It is intended to be a community podcast. Go to ITunes click on Podcast. Go to Advanced. Click on Subscribe to Podcasts and then put in the following URL http://feeds.feedburner.com/ThePrinceAlbertPodcasts
