Audio Podcasts

The Podcast Pilot group had training on GarageBand last week and I recorded my first audio tutorial today.

I finally figured out what was wrong with the new Plantronics headset. I turned up every volume switch I could find. I searched for missing drivers. I Googled FAQs trying to find others who couldn't get their headsets to record loud enough. And then, out of desperation, I bent the microphone in. It worked. The microphone wasn't close enough to my mouth. :| I don't think I need to say anything else about that.

The good news is--they sound great!!! Really nice audio with noise canceling.

More good news--the ACRL Best Practices section of the Alabama Library Association has accepted my proposal for a presentation on the Podcasting Pilot experience for their annual conference in April!

I finished revising the last ANNA tutorial module in the video podcasts and plan to have a select group of classes use them in the Spring. Dr. Yuen has provided a survey that we will use for assessment in each class.

I still have to come up with assessment of the tutorials for the library!

Accessibility

It turns out there are more issues to making educational materials accessible online than I ever would have imagined.

First you have to make sure your information is clear and understandable.

Then you want to make sure you provide the material in multiple formats for different learning styles.

Then you have to worry about browsers. Can people with Firefox and Safari access this as well as people with Internet Explorer? Can people with newer and older versions of those browsers access this?

Next you have to worry about bandwidth. Is this file too big to download quickly? Will video and audio take too long to load for people that do not have high speed Internet access?

After attending a presentation on WebCT/Blackboard accessibility now I know educational materials need to be accessible in very specific ways for those with disabilities as well.

I assumed providing an alternate text tutorial to my video tutorials was enough but legally I am required to provide captions for each video.

Our Institute for Disability Studies provides a really neat "Webcasting Captioning Decision Tree" at http://www.usm.edu/ids/accessforall/caption

Just answer the questions and follow the flow chart to see what your podcast requires to make it accessible to everyone.

I'm lucky that Camtasia provides an option for captions. I just have to go back and figure out how to do it! :)

Video Podcasts are up!

Great news! The Camtasia tutorials I have completed are now up as video podcasts as well as flash!

http://www.lib.usm.edu/help/tutorials.html

I hope to have the audio podcasts ready soon and more Camtasia videos as well.

Dr. Echevarria, from the Podcast Pilot group, has also given me some great links for learning how to use GarageBand to create podcasts:

http://podcasts.psu.edu/garageband

http://podcasting.about.com/od/editinggarageband/ss/editgb.htm

http://www.apple.com/support/garageband/podcasts/

Also of interest, the DiMenna-Nyselius library at Fairfield University has made some very creative podcasts for their English 102 classes: http://www.fairfield.edu/lib_podcasts.html"

They personify their databases and then interview them. It seems a little silly but it just might work. I passed a final in Geology once by turning all my study material into a children's story so I could remember it.

Digital Audio Repositories

While looking up podcasting policies from other Universities in preparation for today's Podcast Pilot roundtable I came across this blog entry: http://dltj.org/2007/06/itunes-u/. The entry itself doesn't provide any new information but the links to digital audio provided by Ohiolink (a consortium of Ohio colleges) really caught my attention.

The Borror Laboratory of Bioacoustics: http://dmc.ohiolink.edu/cgi/i/image/image-idx?page=index;c=blb

and

Foreign Language Videos: http://dmc.ohiolink.edu/cgi/i/image/image-idx?page=index;c=forglv

I have been thinking of library podcasts from an instructional viewpoint but hadn't even considered podcasts of actual archived digital content. We have oral histories here that would be perfect for podcasting.

And what about content produced by the University? There is a lot of talk (and some practice!) of libraries becoming digital repositories for all scholarly output from their University. Would the library have an obligation to archive podcasts from faculty and to make those available to the University community?

I think I will save the discussion of policies and all the fun things associated with those for the next blog entry. We're meeting in a few weeks to learn how to set up RSS feeds and then later to learn about Garageband. I am meeting with our Web master on Monday to talk about file size and other issues with creating podcasts for our page. We're also going to have shrink the Camtasia tutorials a little!

Podcasts Are Everywhere!

A big thanks to my friend and co-worker Cynthia for sending me a link to the August 11th entry in the Information Wants to Be Free blog. http://meredith.wolfwater.com/wordpress/index.php/2007/08/11/be-the-first-lab/

There are a lot of links for podcasting resources for all kinds of librarians here. One that I've added to the links on my blog is the David Free Library Podcasting Resources wiki: http://davidfree.pbwiki.com/Library%20Podcasting%20Resources

Yesterday I was listening to a podcast linked from the page, Learning to Speak: Creating a Library Podcast with a Unique Voice by Chris Kertz. I was hoping it would talk about actual speaking and breathing techniques but instead it talked about the idea of podcasting a radio show from the library. Dowling College started a podcast called Omnibus that Kertz hoped to make as much like NPR's This American Life as possible. It's an interesting PR angle for the library that I had not considered before. They consider it a "conversation" between the library and its community and include interviews from students and others that somehow intersect with the library while not neccesarily being part of the library. I can see how that would be a really fun and interesting project but right now, with our limited staff and time, I think our library needs to focus on podcasts as an educational tool.

Fall Semester is here!

Well, all has been quiet on the podcast front but things are busy, busy on campus with the new semester! The podcast pilot group has recently met to "meet our Macs" and we will meet again soon to learn how to record and edit our podcasts with Garageband. We will also meet to work out policies related to ITunes U and podcast use on campus.

I received my new headphones w/ microphone for creating library podcasts today! I had some pretty old ones before and everyone said I looked like a Time Life operator. The sound quality wasn't amazing either. The new Plantronics headphones are USB and digital. They were the lowest price that still had the sound quality we were looking for. The CreativeTechs tips blog has a great comparison: http://www.creativetechs.com/iq/what_is_a_good_microphone_for_podcasting_1.html. I can't wait to try them out!

Although we don't have our webspace to upload podcasts yet, some instructors have found that they can upload a limited number of audio files to file sharing applications in social networking sites like Facebook. We have also been trained this summer to use the Wimba podcaster! This neat little tool will let you upload a limited number of podcasts for your students into the Blackboard Learning System. You can also allow your students to create their own podcasts and they can subscribe to podcasts using Wimba. For more information take a look here: http://www.wimba.com/products/voicetools/

The library podcasts are coming soon. Three of the Camtasia tutorials are going up today. Three more have to be edited some more before they're ready to go. We hope to eventually have physical tours of the library available in podcast form as well. A neat example is available from the Alden Library at the University of Ohio: http://www.library.ohiou.edu/podcasts/?page_id=14.

Voice Lessons

My iPod still hasn't returned from its trip to the Apple hospital but in the meantime I've received a Macbook that I've been learning to use.

I have also been continuing my struggle with Camtasia. Who knew two minutes of video could take so many hours? I'm so sick of doing the same things over and over again I'm almost ready to just stick Power Point presentations up and hope for the best. And I won't even go into how things seem to be moving around on the time line by themselves and call outs that match the audio in the editor no longer match when the video is produced...

But I'm learning a good lesson about audio that will help when I start recording my podcasts.

First, after literally starting over again 20 times yesterday, I finally got my script out as close to perfect as I've ever come, only to find my microphone had come unplugged.

So, make sure my equipment is working.

Second, I have no idea how to speak. I've somehow managed to communicate all these years but when it comes to recording audio for instruction I'm a disaster. Sometimes I go too fast and then go too slow. Sometimes my voice goes up too high for no reason. Sometimes I lapse into some weird story telling voice and other times I run out of breath.

I feel like I need voice lessons for podcasters. I'm going to look around and see if I can find any advice on pacing, tone, and breathing.

But I might take a break to take some more weird pictures with my Macbook...

R.I.P. Little iPod

Well, I'm back from ALA and it turns out iPods don't like airport scanners. My iPod died shortly after my flight started and remained lifeless despite all the emergency procedures performed. But, never fear! I'm shipping it back to Apple and they plan to repair or replace it so I'll be back in business shortly.

I was able to attend a few sessions relevant to podcasting at ALA but I really wish I had known about the Computers in Libraries conference in Virginia this past Spring. "Podcasting and Videocasting Bootcamp" would have been a great workshop to attend. Luckily, there are links to this presentation as well as "Podcasting 101" and "Podcasting with a Purpose: Possibilities for Library Instruction" here: http://www.infotoday.com/cil2007/presentations/default.shtml

I attended a session on using video for instruction purposes and I left feeling like I had learned what not to do instead of gaining any useful "how to"s. The videos were long and clunky and students complained that they just wanted to get their information and go. Is audio the same thing? Is the medium too fixed? The Internet liberated text from its dormant format. Are we going backwards using audio and video?

I don't think we are if we use it correctly. When I bought my sewing machine a few years ago it came with an instructional video I could watch on the computer. I could pause the video and go through the steps on my own machine. I could go back in the video to any point to go back over things I didn't understand. And I felt that it was effective. I think screencasting would have this same effectiveness as opposed to some sort of "skit" on a video that students feel is wasting their time.

With instructional audio I think the point is to keep it short and relevant. There's no frustration over searching for a certain segment in a podcast if you make a seperate podcast for each segment. It would be different for lecture classes but for the type of instruction I'm doing it makes sense to have modules.

iPod Honeymoon

I've been distracted by Camtasia but I've still been making time to read (and listen!) to information on creating and marketing podcasts.

I have found that I don't actually have time to listen to the gazillion podcasts I zealously subscribed to when I first fell in love with my iPod. I apparently thought I lived in a William Gibson novel and could simply download all the podcasts and immediately make use of the information. But it turns out I still live in the real world where listening to an hour of audio actually takes an hour of my time! This is a good incentive to create my podcasts short and sweet!

At the last session for the Podcast Pilot we learned about Audacity and our tech team installed it for me yesterday. I haven't had a chance to play with it yet but I think I'll be forced to use it. Even though my little Belkin microphone promised CD quality audio, the recording I did Saturday for a potential tutorial was pretty rough. I picked up the sounds of my laptop harddrive, my ankle popping, papers rustling and some annoying southern accent that I can't possibly have.

In an instruction assessment meeting last week we decided to have optional pre and post tests for the podcasts. My department head offered to buy an iTunes gift card that voluntary participants would be registered for.

We are also meeting with Nursing instructors about their online program this week and I see potential there for using podcasts and assessing their use.

I'm off to D.C. on Friday for the ALA conference. I was dissapointed to see there are only two sessions about podcasting but I know my iPod will come in handy on the airplane and the metro!

Podcast Pondering

Before lunch today I downloaded podcasts from the MSU library: http://library.msstate.edu/content/templates/?a=1160&/

They sound like NPR podcasts. Apparently they had about $3,000 worth of equipment--a 13 inch MacBook with the iLife suite, a 1.66 GHz MacMini, a microphone, desktop stand, windscreen (what is that?!), a Marantz digital recorder and books on podcasting. They also have an entire committee approving scripts and working on the project.

I'm trying to figure out a way to create interactive Camtasia tutorials that I can also put in a simple slideshow-type format for Vodcasts and then have audio for just podcasts. Same screen shots for both projects.

And how will I assess the podcasts? I can see how many times they have been downloaded but this won't assess their effectiveness. I don't see a way to include a survey since the podcasts are put on a device and the user doesn't even have to be online while they're watching it. And the downloads are anonymous so I can't e-mail them a survey. And if I include them in iTunes there won't be a way to keep up with download statistics.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. I need to create these things first. That's the hard (and the fun?!) part.

In other news, my iPod has a fancy new hot pink outfit. It's not the greatest but it protects the screen and the click wheel for now.

Learning to use iTunes

When I got in to work today iTunes had been installed on my laptop! I immediately plugged in my iPod and began clicking around. It seemed obvious how to go to the iTunes store and purchase something but how did I put my own files in here? I finally clicked on “Files” and brought the podcasts from Dr. Yuen’s page that I had saved into the program. Okay. Now how do I put something from an online podcast in here? After reading the instructions at The SirsiDynix Institute: http://www.sirsidynixinstitute.com/podcast.php I figured out how to subscribe to a podcast. All I had to do for the individual files was save them and bring them in to the library. I found some “vodcasts” at Cal State University Fullerton : http://faculty.fullerton.edu/rclemens/Nursing.htm and loaded one up. Great. Everything is in iTunes. Now how do I get it on my iPod? Finally I saw a menu option on the left side for my “device.” I clicked on it and found out how I could sync my podcasts and videos. I created some new playlists to organize my audio files but they are still listed as “music.” And the vodcast went to “Movies” instead of Video Podcasts. Now how can I find more stuff to put on here? I went to NPR.org and discovered a gold mine of podcasts. My heart sped up and I started envisioning spending every minute of the day cramming random news and trivia into my brain while doing other tasks. The iPod was becoming more valuable to me by the second. I looked at it and felt a sense of panic. It’s so small! What if I lose it? What if someone walks off with it? What if I drop it in the dishwater? I make a vow to purchase a little iPod holster like Dr. Xue’s as soon as possible. The mystery of the students with white cords hanging from their ears is finally solved.

Learning to use my iPod

I didn’t really take my iPod out during the kickoff lunch because I was sure I was going to mess something up. Plus, I was afraid Dr. Davies would swap it for the one he had already gotten mustard on. Back in my office I hesitantly unpacked it again and poked around a little but was soon swamped with phone calls and e-mails and work duties that took me away from it. All the accessories made me feel like I needed a special iPod bag. Maybe they make those. I’ll have to look into it!

Later that afternoon I rediscovered the beauty of instruction manuals and learned that I need the iTunes program. My computer security wouldn’t let me install it so I put in a request to our tech department and set out to figure out what I could without iTunes. Again, the magical instruction book came to my rescue. I learned how to use the click wheel and navigate through the menus. I was relieved to see that the “Games” menu did not include Tetris or I would probably lose my job and be kicked out of the pilot program for never doing anything else.

Then I plugged in the voice recorder. An option to record popped right up so I bravely started shrieking, “Testing” into the little fly-eye microphone but nothing happened. Again with the instructions. Just a click of the “play pause” button and I was recording like a pro. I was able to save and play back and it sounds great!