Uploading Podcasts

For this week, your reading load should be relatively light, as we've reached the point in the semester where I imagine that you are focusing pretty intensely on your Big Project (and if you're not, you probably should be!). As we approach Thanksgiving, we will be spending one final week (or ten days) working on learning a new technology, in this case, podcasts. There are obviously a number of options for posting audio and video online. Most smart phones contain tools that can allow you to post directly to YouTube at the click of a button. That said,video files can take a lot of bandwidth and may be difficult to upload quickly. You may also face situations where you'd rather post audio only. In this scenario, the ability to post a podcast can be helpful.

As you'll notice, one of the articles I've included is a Prof Hacker post I wrote a year or two ago when I first started teaching online. In order to retain a little more control over my podcasts, I decided to use the method described in the post, recording the podcast using Audacity and then converting it to an MP3 using the LAME MP3 encoder (for whatever reason, podcast recording devices can't convert or save files as MP3s). You may experience some trial and error using the LAME MP3 encoder, so please be patient with that.

Once you have your MP3 file, you can upload it for free to the Internet Archive, the free, non-profit site where I have been posting our podcasts all semester. This is relatively easy, although as you upload, the uploader will ask a few questions (some of them including what types of rights you'd like to assert over the video).

For now, you can engage with this material on your blog in whatever way you see fit, but for the final project, I'd like you to record either a podcast presentation or a YouTube video of your presentation. If you do a podcast, I'll have both your Prezi and your podcast open and you can direct me about when I need to click to the next stop on the path that you have created. If it's a YouTube video, you can present the material in whatever way you see fit.

I don't recommend procrastinating on either the Prezi or the podcast, so please don't try to put these together at the last minute.