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...