Podcast vs. Lecturecast

[David Wissore]

I'm just curious how many people are using podcasting at their institution and if it's true podcasting or if it's only "lecturecasting" under the banner of podcasting. In either case, how did you do it (what software, what delivery method, etc). Thanks in advance for the responses.

[Ann White]

We do a podcast through the marketing office. I am primary responsible for topic/interviews/show notes. I admit it's not my favorite thing to do, mainly because I am not confident in my capabilities as a broadcast journalist.

In my mind, when I think about my dream for our podcast, I would love to have it be more of a "This American Life" or "Rest of the Story" type of thing, where we get to tell about and highlight those behind the scene backstories that don't get much press through other marketing venues.

Well, that's my dream, but in actuality it is more of an advertising venue for big events.

We use audacity, then run it through expression engine, which then sends it to iTunes. It is also available to listen to streaming on our website.

[Jon Harman]

We do podcasting in the sense that we specifically record scripted audio programmes, though we don't actually podcast them in terms of RSS feed.

Just recording a lecture can be a handy revision tool for students, but I question the actual learning design of doing this. To create podcasts we use Apple's free Garageband software, but there is plenty of other podcast software out there.

[David Wissore]

What was the response by faculty to learn Garageband? My fear is providing any piece of software that will end up being a support beast and, in the long run, be more trouble than it's worth. Audacity is a great program, but not for the average faculty member at our institution.

I definitely agree that recording a lecture can be a great tool, but considering how many students listen to podcasts over radio right now, I'm tentative also to record a lecture and call it a podcast.

Thanks again,
David

[Jon Harman]

We're slightly different that we have an entire multi media production unit of 35 staff to produce all media products, so we let faculty be SME's for content and then we produce. I know this is a luxury that most organisations don't have, though believe Garageband is specifically designed for the prosumer market, so not particularly hard to master.

[Richard O'Keeffe]

Some of the profs @ Pepperdine's GSEP podcast - free form, conversational - distinctly NOT lecturecast. (How do you define podcast [I can guess lecturecast def.?])
Richard

[David Wissore]

Thanks everyone for the responses. I think my definition of podcast at this point is anything that isn't a recording of only classroom lecture. It is my hope that a podcast will have some form of production value and not just be one person behind a microphone on the desk with nothing else. I know it's a little vague, but I definitely appreciate the feedback.

David

[E. James Ford]

We've been doing, I guess, a combination of podcast/lecture cast for a few months now. We primarily do special events... Not classroom lectures, but visiting scholars or full-time faculty at a public event. We use a combination of a few different methods for delivery:

1) I manually update an XML feed.
2) We use studio.odeo.com to generate a feed (and use this feed for iTunes, since they're on top of compatibility issues)
3) We use flash players to embed local copies of the media on our website.

For creation, we have a Zoom H2 that we lend out to departments/faculty. I get the audio files back, give them a quick edit in Audacity for long pauses or sound-cut-outs. Then I record an introduction and up it goes.

The great thing about using Audacity as a solution you can distribute is that there is SO MUCH help material out there already. If folks are interested in creating their own podcast, I'll usually send them a link to some video tutorials on how to use Audacity and a link to its wiki.