Gaining competence at Podcasting

Well, a little trial and error certainly does wonders when it comes to learning new technologies. I've spent several hours over the last few days trying out some different microphones and tools, and I have to say there is a lot of variation to sound quality and it's worth taking some time to figure out which options work best for your situation.

I discovered that if I used a landline or had at least three bars on my cellphone I could get strong sound quality when recording a podcast directly from my phone to GCast, but if I was reading text (rather than just talking without prompts) that I strongly preferred using a headset to allow my hands to be free. However, when using a Bluetooth unit that places the microphone closer to my ear than my mouth, more ambient sounds came through on the recording. I also tried a couple of external microphones, and quickly rejected use of my omnidirectional microphone because it captured too much background noise (including paper rustling, chair squeaking, and people in the hallway outside of my office), while a more traditional clip-on or personal desktop mic seemed to work a bit better than my computer's internal microphone. The good news is that there are many options for easily recording the audio portion, but that some may work better than others depending on the level of background noise one can tolerate, and perhaps how many voices one is trying to record.

I also finally figured out how to edit a podcast - I started out overlaying sound rather than erasing and replacing it, but once I finally located the erase button things fell into place quickly. Initially when I would make a reading error I felt the need to start fresh, but it's actually rather easy just to pause, start again at a paragraph or line break, and then go back through cutting out the unwanted portions. I haven't tried anything fancy yet - no layers of words and music, no fades or break, etc., but I've gotten a handle on how to produce a basic audio text to supplement printed text on my site.

I've happily gotten smarter with my preparations for recording. For today my goal was to create a podcast introducing myself to my students. I wrote a script, and then read through it a couple of times to practice the pauses and inflections. At first I was attempting to prep myself to read the text as written, but then switched the wording in the text to better match my speech patterns. When I finally did record the podcast, I tried to stay close to the text, but still strayed a bit to clean up the flow and adapt to times when I misread what was written. When replaying the completed podcast, I updated the text to match the wording I used (however it's important to recognize that the text transcriptions need not be verbatim - and sometimes intentionally aren't so they can confer inflection or structural information).

I also over-corrected when trying to overcome my robotic speaking tone, at first speaking too quickly and with too much inflection. In my last recording I tried to image the students listening to my podcast while on the treadmill, hanging out in a coffeehouse, or sitting in front of the computer. If I was speaking too fast they might need to replay the podcast to truly digest the content, but if speaking too slowly or dryly they would become distracted. I'm guessing the tempo will depend a bit on the type of information I'm trying to convey, but this will continue to take practice.

So, my second completed podcast is an introduction to me that I intend to post on my course homepage. You can find the podcast on my GCast page under the title About Your Instructor. A printed transcript of the podcast is posted below.

Until next time. Betsy

About Your Instructor

Note: A Podcast version of this document is available for download at http://www.gcast.com/u/onlineeducator/main

Hello! Welcome to Gender and Education. I'm your instructor Betsy Eudey. I strongly prefer for you to refer to me as Betsy, although you're also welcomed to call me Dr. Eudey (pronounced "you-dee") or Ms. Eudey.

I am the Director of the Gender Studies program at CSU Stanislaus, and have been here as an Assistant Professor of Gender Studies since 2003. I have taught all of the core courses in the program including Women's and Feminist Activism; Women's Development and Lifestyle Choices; Contemporary Gender Studies Research; Gender and Education; Gender Theory; Gender and Ethnicity in Children's Literature and Culture; Multiculturalism: From Bias to Reality; and Society and Gender. I also teach in the first year experience program.

As you’ll soon learn, I’ve been attending or working at a school or college campus every year since I entered kindergarten in 1970. After starting college at UC Davis with a major in biochemistry, I decided med school wasn’t for me, and eventually graduated with a BA in Psychology. After college I worked at Marymount College, Palos Verdes and at Cal Poly Pomona as a resident director and as a Greek system adviser and event planner. I then got my M.Ed. in Higher Education and Student Affairs Administration from the University of Vermont, working in financial aid, multicultural affairs, residence life, and first year experience programs. My Master's thesis was a study of affirmative action college admissions programs.

From Vermont I went on to The Ohio State University to get a PhD and work at the campus as a resident director, director of women student services, and teaching assistant in the College of Education. While a student I also worked for three years as a gardener, and was an Americorps volunteer, tutoring second graders. My doctoral degree was in cultural studies in education, with an emphasis on women and gender. My dissertation was a study of teaching at a K-12 girls' school in central Ohio. Before coming to CSU Stanislaus, I worked for five years as the founding director and faculty member of the Center for Women's Studies and Programs at the University of South Carolina at Spartanburg.

Most of my research and writing addresses the intersections of ethnicity, class, and gender, especially in educational environments. I also do research on the fields of women's and gender studies, and I have a passion for issues related to media and technology. I have nearly completed another Master's degree - this time in International Relations - as a means to increase my knowledge of global gender issues. I'm also in working on a master's degree in Online Learning. I shuld finish both of these degrees by Spring 2009.

I live on the Delta in Stockton on a 46 foot fishing yacht, and I have a really fun wakesurfing boat, so I spend most of my free time playing on the water. I'm also addicted to college and pro football, and will struggle to focus on classes and grading each fall because I'd much rather be watching a game. I'm also a pop culture junkie, and watch lots of tv and movies, love my XM radio, and play video games when I have a chance.

I’m looking forward to getting to know all of you as we spend a few months together discussing issues related to gender and education.

first try at podcasting

After reviewing many of the sites I found yesterday, I decided to make a first attempt at creating my own podcast. Following the recommendation posted at About.com about creating your own podcasts, I selected Audacity for my first podcasting software/service. I selected the stable version (1.2.6) rather than the Beta version (1.3.3) because I am new to this technology and both seemed to work with my Mac. The application loaded easily. I briefly looked at a few of the tutorials provided by Audacity, but realized I wasn't really paying attention to the detailed information about sound, servers, and saving tips because what I really wanted to do was record something. So, I closed the tutorials and gave recording a try.

The basic controls using Audacity are pretty simple - a button for record, another for pause, another to stop. Fortunately, Audacity warns you when you attempt to start a new file that unless you identify a location the file is automatically saved to the Audacity system. I quickly saved the empty file to a location on my hard drive, and then got ready to record. I am using a MacBook that has in internal microphone, and I thought I'd test this out before using an external mic. I found a bit of text about a course I am teaching, hit record, and was on my way. As soon as I'd started I realized I'd not planned this well - I hadn't pre-read the text so I wasn't anticipating inflections and pauses as well as I should. Oh well, live and learn.

When I finished recording, I hit play, and was pleasantly surprised to find that the sound quality was quite good for having used an internal microphone, and that my diction was a bit stronger than I'd expected. I was also aware that I was talking rather slowly and a bit robotically, which I think was due to the dryness of the text and my desire to be easily understood. I'll need to practice more with speaking like a human being, which in part will be improved if I write in a more conversational manner.

Audacity 1.2.6 saves the file as an .aup file that you can later export in other formats (.wav or .mp3 or Ogg Vorbis). I exported it first as a WAV file, and then attempted to do so as an MP3 file. I received a message indicating "Audacity does not export MP3 files directly, but instead uses LAME, an MP3 exporting library available separately. See the documentation for more information." Needless to say, in my haste to skip the tutorials and record a podcast, I did not load the LAME program, and will need to go back to do that before saving an MP3.

So, at this point I have a podcast to share, but need to find a host. I selected GCast because it's free and seems easy to use. As with most services, you start by signing in - email address, zip code, password, and desired user name. You'll also be asked for the phone number from which you will most frequently record audio podcasts (this is optional, but a nice feature because it will recognize the number when you call) and you'll also create a four-digit PIN. You're then ready to create a podcast - either by phoning it in, uploading a file, or choosing music available via GarageBand. I chose to upload a file from my computer, and wouldn't you know it, GCast only posts MP3 files, not WAV. Sigh.

I went back to Audacity, selected "help" from the toolbar, and under Frequently Asked Questions found information on how to load the LAME MP3 encoder. The version of LAME for my Mac (PPC) and the version of Audacity (1.2.6) that I had selected didn't download properly. I then went back and reloaded the beta version of Audacity (1.3.3) because there was a different version of LAME available for that version. This loaded quickly and correctly. I then had to open my saved file in the new version of Audacity. I received a warning message that the file could possibly not convert well, but in fact there were no apparent problems. When I selected the "export" function I found that version 1.3.3 offers more file options - WAV, AIFF, and other uncompressed types, MP3, OGG, FLAC, MP2, and external program. I don't know what most of these mean, but I was easily able to save my podcast as an MP3.

I now returned to GCast with an MP3 file to load. I had to enter a name for the podcast, select the file from my hard drive, selected whether or not to have it post to my GCast page, and had the option of adding a description. Upon submission I got the following message "We got your file, and are now checking your upload and will convert it into a low-bitrate version for our dial-up friends. When we're done, your upload will be available for use in playlists and podcasts. (Once encoded, your upload will be automatically added to your master playlist and published to your podcast.)" This seemed to me to be very user-friendly and efficient.

The file was available two minutes later (perhaps sooner, but I didn't check immediately). When playing the file there were several options for listening to or forwarding the podcast. You can listen to the podcast at the onlineeducator site on GCast, and get a look at my SecondLife avatar - my SL name is Bri Cioc. From the podcast you can note times when I lost track of the flow of the text, due to my failure to prepare to read.

All in all, GCast was very easy to use, and I will certainly be comfortable using it again. Audacity seems like it will work well, too, now that I have the correct files loaded. My next challenges will be to learn editing features, to see how the sound quality changes with use of an external microphone, and to try phoning in a podcast.

For now, I'm feeling like I've already learned a lot and can create acceptable podcasts for use with my classes. Clearly there is more to learn and practice, but I'm no longer questioning my ability to use this technology.

Creating Accessible Podcasts

The first source I found was "Making Podcasts Accessible" offering "step-by-step" information on accessible audio- and videocasts. The site includes a podcast about podcasting (with a printed transcript, as accessible sites should). The site recommends trying Dragon Naturally Speaking software that recognizes voices (but only one voice at a time) for audio podcasts, and has more detailed information on the videocasts.

InDelv.com posted an article on Accessible Podcasts on December 29, 2007 that specifically addresses the importance of accessibility in university settings. The article recognizes that you must consider those who are (a) seeing impaired, (b) hearing impaired, and (c) both sight and sound impaired. The author provides some recommendations on how to make the podcasts accessible, and some of the common complaints with the outcomes. One interesting comment was that often those without "impairments" are using alternative technologies to view or hear information in non-traditional locations/ways (i.e. listening to a lecture while commuting, reading a videocast while in a location where no sound is available).

As noted elsewhere on this blog, Casting Words provides transcription services for podcasts, for as low as 75cents per minute. They also have a subscription service that contracts them to transcribe all podcasts as they are posted. Submitted files may be WAV or MP3 files, and can be transcribed as plain text, html or RTF.

Information on using podcasts in courses

Posted to Educause Connect, "This 29-minute podcast recorded during the EDUCAUSE 2007 Annual Conference features Diane Zorn, Course Director, School of Arts & Letters, York University in a session titled 'Using Video Streaming and Podcasting to Design Rich-Media Online Courses.'"

Who's Using Podcasting in Education and How? is posted/hosted by Fordham University on it's Podcast for Teachers site, and offers lots of examples of classes in which podcasts have been used and links to articles and blogs addressing this topic.

A wiki-posting entitled "University of Connecticut - Beyond Lecturecasting: Using Podcasts for Discussion and Student Content Creation" describes the value of creating podcasts of discussion sections that allow students and the instructor's views and questions to become part of the course materials available to all. This is more suited to a F2F classroom than an online course, but it does help me to think differently about whose voices are made available via podcasts.

Podcasts available online, including those with gender-related topics

IdiotVox - a directory of podcasts and videocasts that can searched by category (including "Gender" which is of particular interest to me). The site includes a lot of ads, but the wealth of podcasts posted makes this a must-see resource for podcasts. The site includes talk and music podcast channels.

Openculture offers a listing of University and College Podcasts that are available for free. The list is alphabetical by campus, and offers brief descriptions of the types of podcasts that are available. Note that the comments posted to the site offer additional campus podcast sites as well as some recommendations for locating additional information. The website also has a text box (on the right side near the top) with links to a Podcast Library searchable by topic.

Stanford on iTunes offers many free lectures online, and can be searched by discipline and keyword. There are many that are on issues related to gender, and talks/lectures are offered by Stanford University faculty as well as invited speakers.

UC Berkeley has a site on which they post course and event podcasts. The webcast.berkeley events podcasts capture special events, lectures, and meetings, while the webcast.berkeley course section offers podcasts of a course lectures from selected courses. Webcast.berkeley can be searched by keyword or general topic/theme. As always, attend to use rules (links on the site offer legal and technical information regarding the postings).

WGBH offers a wide array of podcasts (audio and video) of their television and radio programs, and is searchable by program title and subject. Their Forum Network includes especially interesting topics and speakers from throughout the greater Boston area including many colleges and universities.

Note that many academic and activist organizations now post podcasts of keynote and plenary speeches. These are often located by typing in the name of the organization, discipline, or subject and the term "podcast." Examples include a keynote address at the Anita Borg Institute and the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing Keynote Address.

Resource for creating podcasts

Here are some online sources that seem to be promising:

Posted to Mashable Social Networking News is the "Podcasting Toolbox: 70+ Podcasting Tools and Resources" that certainly delivers on its promise. The site includes links to info on creating podcasts, video podcasting, converting text to podcasts (and vice versa), directories of podcasts, and lots of other topics. Highly recommended, although not all links worked when I tried them.

About.com has some pretty clear advice on how to create a podcast. The posting is entitled "How to Create Your Own Podcast - A Step-by-step Tutorial." The site not only offers detailed information, but also links you to sources for Online Tools and Software to Create Podcasts that might be easier to use.

Gcast provides a way to create FREE podcasts using your phone and/or MP3 files, and will host them one a site that includes advertisements (which is why the service is free). The site indicates an intention to offer a fee-based service that eliminates the ads, but it didn't yet appear to be available.

Another cool site is Coop's Word on Podcasting and Blogging, which offers more information that I can quickly process regarding blogs, podcasts, and the tech tools that help in this endeavor. The site includes links to podcasting resources, and includes an especially interesting post from April 18, 2007 describing the use of SitePal to create an avatar that provides podcast updates and information to her students.

Creative Commons is a non-profit organization whose website homepage indicates that it "provides free tools that let authors, scientists, artists, and educators easily mark their creative work with the freedoms they want it to carry. You can use CC to change your copyright terms from "All Rights Reserved" to "Some Rights Reserved." The site provides information on how to obtain some legal and authorial rights to text, images, audio, and other works that are made available via the internet and other public sources. This seems to be a great site to help bridge the chasm between complete/full copyright of material and works that are wholly public domain. Several of the sites that post podcasts have named Creative Commons as the source of their copyright. Of special interest is Podcasting Legal Guide which offers a wealth of information about copyright, use of podcasts by teachers and librarians, how to obtain rights to post podcasts (esp from those whose voices/images are captured), legal issues regarding using prerecorded music and video within the podcast, and other topics of possible interest to teachers and other users.

Casting Words provides transcription services for podcasts, ranging from 75 cents a minute for standard transcription (taking a month or more to complete), to $1.50 a minute for 6-day turn-around, to $2.50 a minute for one-day turn-around. They also have a subscription service that contracts them to transcribe all podcasts as they are posted. Submitted files may be WAV or MP3 files, and can be transcribed as plain text, html or RTF.

Of related interest may be the option to add sound to a Powerpoint presentation. Some easy guidelines for this are posted online in an aptly-entitled PowerPoint Tutorial - Adding Sound. This may be a better option for those who benefit from both audio and visual stimulation.

Wimba is another tool for creating podcasts that can then be sent to student's iTunes podcast lists without them having to log into a course website. Wimba offers a "collaboration suite" that integrates many voice, video and document/text opportunities, and integrates with Angel, Blackboard, Moodle and WebCT. This is not free, but perhaps is something a campus would purchase.

Getting started with podcasts

I've decided to start this blog by keeping track of my experiences learning about podcasting. In my prior online and f2f classes I've directed students to links for podcasts, but I haven't ever created my own, and I haven't dealt at all with accessibility issues related to podcasts. So, for the next few postings I'm going to explore the following:
(1) locate sites that provide information about podcasts and their use in educational settings
(2) locate sites that already include podcasts related to topics I teach (i.e. gender issues)
(3) learn more about creating my own podcasts
(4) try to create a podcast for the class I'm including in the final project
(5) find more information on making podcasts accessible (those I find, and those I create).

I know this is a lot for one week, but I'm going to give it a try. Wish me luck! B.