CARLA Technology Summer Institute

Podcasting

Page history last edited by Marlene 4 mos ago

Podcast Basics - Listen Up!

You will need a player to listen to podcasts. Here are two you may already have on your computer:

How do I subscribe and what happens when I do?

Subscribing to a podcast is like having a newspaper delivered to your door instead of walking to the corner store to get one…only better, it’s FREE. Subscribing is the easiest way to download podcasts and then you can listen to them whenever and wherever you want. If you find a podcast you like and would like to try it out, go ahead and click Subscribe, you can always unsubscribe and remove any podcasts you have downloaded.

There are a number of ways to read or listen to things you subscribe to. Here are a couple of suggestions:

In iTunes:

Use the Settings option on the lower-left of iTunes to configure your subscription (i.e. how often you want to check for new episodes, whether and what to download, and what to keep). Click OK.
Once you've subscribed, click Get to download previous podcast episodes.
You can delete episodes or whole podcasts - PC (right-click) Mac (control-click) -> Delete or unsubscribe (button lower right) at anytime.

Google Reader:

Look for the RSS button on the page of the podcast or wiki or blog that you would like to subscribe to - there's one at the bottom of this page!
When you click on the RSS link or button, a page will come up that asks if you would like to add it to a reader of some sort.
You can find the Google Reader from your Google account, or set up an iGoogle page for easy access.

Language Podcasts

Chinese - http://chinesepod.com/
Pod-EFL – long list of links for ELT podcasting down the right side
http://www.pod-efl.com/
Spanish 4 You - http://ssl4you.blogspot.com/
There is a list of 12 podcasts with a theme conversation.Below you will find blog posts with the script of the conversation in Spanish and then English with a list of vocab in the middle.
Learn Italian Pod
http://www.learnitalianpod.com/
Wikibook on learning Chinese
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Chinese_%28Mandarin%29
Mohawk Language – blog with connected podcast
http://kanienkeha.blogspot.com/

Owenni:io The Good Word
Storycorps – extraordinary stories from everyday people
http://www.storycorps.net/
Free Foreign Language Lessons

http://www.oculture.com/2006/10/foreign_languag.html

Create Your Own!

A podcast is simply a set of audio files grouped together with a feed^* so that users can subscribe and be notified of new episodes. In order to create a podcast, you need to first make your audio, and second use an online tool to publish it. The publishing tool takes care of all the feed details for you.

ClickCaster.com is my favorite publishing tool.
Gcast.com allows you to record episodes using your phone.
Online Tools and Software For Creating Podcast Feeds and Posts at About.com lists these two and others.
PodcastPeople - online site to host audio and video podcasts. Multiple teachers can use one account, but this service is not free (~ $8/month)
The Language Center has a Creating Your Own Podcast page.

For those interested in a little more flexibility and control, you can use WildVoice to host your audio files and use Blogger to create your feed of short blog entries by linking to your audio as an enclosure.

Student Projects

This is a link to a radio show project by ESL student in NYC. Though not a podcast, the project could be adapted and made into a podcast.

http://www.lagcc.cuny.edu/ctl/dfl/sampler/activities/heppner.htm

Sound Effects

Most radio shows have background music at the beginning and end. Try these sites for free audio and sound effects:

http://www.soundjay.com/

* Podcasts, just like blogs and news sites, make use of RSS feeds to deliver content to subscribers. If you want a quick and fun introduction to RSS, check out RSS in Plain English from commoncraft.