Podcasts in Higher Ed, Part 2

In my last podcast post, I mentioned that I’ve utilized podcasts in the classroom for instructional purposes, but that I’ve also used them for public relations purposes. I’ve worked a bit with my college’s admissions office producing podcasts for announcements as well as for interview purposes. We’ve posted these podcasts on admission blogs and web pages, so that’s a little different usage of podcasts than what faculty members typically do – using podcasts for lecture purposes. However, the rendering process for creating podcasts, in my experience, has been the same.

I like to use Apple’s GarageBand (mac platform) for rendering podcasts. If I’m creating a solo podcast of myself, for example, I’ll record directly into GarageBand via a microphone or headseat. This gives me the luxury of keeping or deleting multiple versions of my recordings on the fly. Typically, I’ll keep the best 2 or 3 takes, and if needed, slice and dice between them to create one acceptable recording.

Things get a little more interesting when I’m recording other people. Most folks become somewhat nervous with a microphone in their face or worse, having to wear a headset and told to speak normally. So, I use a third party little voice recorder to capture the interview or speech. If this is a rehearsed effort, I’ll record at least 3 takes that I can use for editing purposes. I import the mp3 files into GarageBand and then just edit them from there to create the podcast.

On the few occasions that I’ve recorded with a digital camcorder for a vid/vodcast, I’ve imported the movie into Apple’s iMovie, edited it, saved it, and imported that into GarageBand for further editing. When you save a podcast or vodcast in GarageBand, it’s automatically encoded for submission to iTunes, if you so desire. Otherwise, you can just upload the mp3/mp4 file directly to your web server for visitor download.

I enjoy creating podcasts, and I think the main reason why is that GarageBand makes it so easy. There was a short software learning curve, but like anything, the more you do it, the more familiar it becomes and consequently for me, a little faster to produce! Ideally, I’d like to have a small mac computer lab on my campus so that I could teach interested faculty how to create their own podcasts. And iMovies, and iDVDs, and… ::insert more mac goodness here:: ☺

Interesting, I seem to prefer a PC for creating web sites. Hmm.