Podcasting – A Beginner’s Guide
[For our movie on creating a podcast click here]
Podcasting is all about the four P’s.
• Plan
• Produce
• Publish
• Promote
Plan
Fight the urge to dive straight in, planning IS important!
The first step in planning your podcast is to choose a topic. In choosing a topic for your podcast select something that interests and excites you; this will make it easier to create a podcast that is organised, relevant and appealing to a wide audience.
Do not overplan – this hinders creativity and douses spontaneity – a simple mind map or similar outlining the steps to be followed will suffice. A skeleton script or cue cards are ideal but this is dependent upon the experience and confidence of your group. The context of the Podcast may determine how detailed the script needs to be.
Take a look at an example Inspiration file below.
Production
The exciting bit! This is when all of the content for the Podcast is created. There are many ways in which you can do this, e.g.:
• external or internal mic
• GarageBand
• iPod recorder
• MP3 recorder
• mobile phone
• iMovie
• Audacity
The list continues to grow…
The equipment you have will decide how you create your Podcast. Click on the link below to see an example using GarageBand.
For more information on how to use GarageBand click here GarageBand
Publishing
Once you’ve created your Podcast, you need to prepare it for publishing and then post it to the internet.
As shown in the example video, the simplest method is to publish your Podcast to iTunes, but you may decide to use another method – you choose.
When publishing, there are a few golden rules:
• where?
• when / how often?
• adhere to ALL aspects of copyright
• stick to your plan but always allow for spontaneity
• one voice only can be monotonous, co-host with others
• consider the length of your Podcast, overly long may turn off the audience
• listen to other Podcasts, take notes to enhance your project
Promote Your Podcast
Obviously you’ll want as many listeners for your Podcast as possible. Once again there are many avenues down which you can travel to advertise your masterpiece.
Perhaps the most effective method is to link it from your own school website or your local authority may provide a hosting mechanism.
Use fellow Podcasters to help advertise your own by leaving messages on their Podcasts, often referred to as a ‘shout out’.
E-mail friends, relatives and colleagues and let them know where to find your Podcast.
If you are familiar with blogging then you should contemplate creating a blog to advertise your Podcast. Click below to find out more about blogs:
Wikis Podcasts and Blogs Collaborative
Links
Why Podcast?
iPods in Education
More on Podcasting
Examples of Podcasts
Room 208
JuniperGreen Podcast
3 responses so far ↓
1
David Muir
// Mar 24, 2006 at 8:25 am
I liked your video, although I worry that some of you adapted so well to pretending to be in Primary 6!
2
Masterclass New Technology » Blog Archive » Podcasting a Beginner’s Guide - Using GarageBand
// Mar 24, 2006 at 8:51 am
[...] A numptys guide to create a podcast with garageBand. Podcasting a Beginner’s Guide – Using GarageBand. includes a mindmap to plan podcast and a hilarious movie. [...]
3
Ruby Rennie » Masterclass new technology March 06
// Mar 24, 2006 at 9:03 am
[...] As a continuing part of the Masterclass programme, sessions were held at Stirling Management centre, looking at blogs, podcasting, wikis, online bookmarks, flickr (an online site for storing photos). Other interesting sites and information included google earth and Comic Life (creating comic stories). I have now created my online bookmarks using delicious, and there is also a set of online bookmarks for things of interest related to Masterclass. Joe has written a blog – a diary – which has a short description of what techonologies were investigated. On Thursday 23rd we worked in groups, and the group I worked with (some of the time!) created a set of instructions for teachers on how to set up and use podcasting. This was created using a wiki. The group has also created a blog for this, where you can leave comments. Another group worked on ideas for tasks and activities for use in the classroom, using blogs: http://sixsmarties.edublogs.org/. One of the other projects was also focussed on creating podcasts – and they have given a video of actually doing the recording. This is great fun to watch, and the instructions are good! David Muir has a blog about using blogs. [...]