Podcasting is an excellent way to engage your students. There are numerous free web-sites that allow you to host a podcast. There is one inherent problem, though. Most of these websites are ad-supported. This is not bad; it allow them to stay free. My main gripe is that a lot of the websites insert audio advertisements into the students’ podcasts. I do not necessarily have a problem with advertisements, but I am not going to corrupt my students’ work if I can help it. I also set high expectations on my students. I expect them to listen to each other’s podcasts and use them as study tools. I do not want to subject them to advertisements every time they want to listen to their or another student’s work. This guide will walk you through podcasting step-by-step, showing how to do everything from recording to publishing. The pedagogical foundation and justification for podcasting will be discussed in a follow-up blog post; this post deals specifically with lessening what appear to be technical hurdles for the average teacher.
The first step is to setup a website for your students’ work. I use Wikispaces, but there are many free websites that will work just as well. I prefer Wikispaces for several reasons, including ease of use, quality of design, price (free Plus account for educators), and management tools (they let you modify most aspects of the site and tack visitors for you so know how many people are viewing the content). If you want to follow along with this tutorial, sign up for a free account and create your own wiki. I would make it private, so other people cannot edit or remove the students’ work; in addition, make sure that you check that it is an educational wiki so that they remove the advertisements. They check each one to make sure that this feature is not abused; usually they remove the ads within 2 days of being notified that you are using it for educational purposes. I will be using http://wchsradio.wikispaces.com throughout this tutorial. Now that you have a site to host the files, we are going to leave the site for a little while. We will come back just as soon as we have something to put on it.
The next step is the actual recording. I use a program called Audacity. You can download it for free by clicking the link. Audacity is a free open-source audio recording and editing program. It works on Linux, Windows, and Mac. In my experience I find that it can be simple enough for the students who do not understand computers well. You simply press the red circle to record, the blue button to pause, and the yellow button to stop when you are done. It also has enough powerful features to help keep the interest of your most technologically or musically inclined students. I had one student adding several tracks, splicing music throughout his podcast, and adding low white noise to make it sound like authentic 1920s radio.
Podcasting sounds like it should be difficult, but if you can press start, pause, and stop, then you know about all you really need to. Make sure that when you are completely finished with the recording, click File, then Export as mp3. Audacity needs a plug-in to export files as mp3, so you can go to this website to download the plug-in. You only need to do this once on whatever computer you are working on.
Your students work is most likely over at this point. They have done the hard part. They’ve researched, planned, and recorded. It is your responsibility to get their podcast to a wider audience. Open your Internet browser and go to the wiki you mad a few steps ago. Once you are there are logged in, click Manage Wiki. You will see a screen that looks like this.
Click on Files. One at a time, upload any .mp3 files that you want to include in your podcast. Once you upload an .mp3, your screen should look similar to this. Add as many files as you want to use in your podcast before continuing on to the next step.
Personally, I think this next step is fun, but if you have little to no experience coding, it may seem intimidating. Just follow the steps exactly and it will work. I promise. We are going to write the .xml file that is going to turn your recordings into an actual podcast that people can subscribe to. You need to open a basic text editing program. On Windows, you can open Notepad or Notepad++ (my favorite code editor). On a Mac, you can open TextEdit. On Ubuntu and most other Linux distos, you can open gedit Text Editor or a similar program (I run Notepad++ under Wine).
Open a new file in the text editor of your choosing. Save it as podcast.xml or something similar. Just make sure that you include the .xml or the progam will automatically save it as .txt or .rtf and it will not work. Copy the following code exactly:
<textarea rows=”3″ cols=”100″>
<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?>
<rss version=”2.0″ xmlns:dc=”http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/”>
<channel>
</textarea>
What you just put in your document is just that this is an xml file (that it carries content or broadcasts your recording) and that it is an rss file (which means that people can subscribe to it). Now we need to setup the whole show. For example, if we were working on a book, right now we would be setting up the title and the copyright page with all the information about the book. When we are done, we will worry about the chapters.
<textarea rows=”9″ cols=”100″>
<title>3rd Periods Podcasts from the 1920s</title>
<link>http://wchsradio.wikispaces.com</link>
<description>These podcasts are recorded by high school students as though the were recording fom the 1920s.</description>
<language>en-us</language>
<copyright>Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License</copyright>
<lastBuildDate>Mon, 1 Dec 2009 16:12:44 GMT</lastBuildDate>
<ttl>60</ttl>
</textarea>
There are a couple of codes that are important for you to understand and the rest you can leave as they are. <title> is the actual whole title of your whole podcast. Remember, if this were a book, this would be equivalent to Twilight. <link> is where you are hosting your show. I put http://wchsradio.wikispaces.com; you should put whatever the address of your wiki is. <description> is a general description of what the whole series is about. For example, returning to our book analogy, “Twilight is a story about a girl who falls in love with a vampire.” <language> should be left alone if your podcast is mostly in English. <copyright> is up to you. This is an optional tag, but it lets people know what their rights are. The license I used for this, since it is student work, is that people can share it, but they cannot change or sell it. <lastBuildDate> is just when you last updated the podcast. Here is empty code. Copy this under what you already have and add your own information.
<textarea rows=”9″ cols=”100″>
<title>ADD YOUR TITLE</title>
<link>ADD YOUR LINK</link>
<description>WHAT IS YOUR SHOW ABOUT?</description>
<language>en-us</language>
<copyright>Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License</copyright>
<lastBuildDate>WHAT DAY DID YOU WORK ON YOUR SHOW?</lastBuildDate>
<ttl>60</ttl>
</textarea>
Now, your title and copyright page are written, you need to add your first chapter. If this were Twilight, we would be writing the chapter First Sight. Here, we call your recording an episode. Skip a line under the code you already have. This doesn’t make a difference, but it does make it easier for you to read. Here is an example of what one episode looks like.
<textarea rows=”8″ cols=”100″>
<item>
<title>Matthew, Deonta, and Porsha</title>
<link>http://www2.cmcss.net/~BedellJasonT/Podcasts/Matthew-Deonta-Porsha.mp3</link>
<description>St. Valentine’s Day Massacre</description>
<pubDate>Tue, 1 May 2007 16:08:53 GMT</pubDate>
<enclosure url=”http://www.cmcss.net/~BedellJasonT/Podcasts/Matthew-Deonta-Porsha.mp3″
length=”7875212″ type=”audio/mpeg”/>
</item>
</textarea>
You may notice some of the same terms. It is true that they do overlap. <title> is whatever the title of the episode is. I happened to use the first names of the students who mad it so that they got credit and it was easier to grade. <link> is where the actual file is online. This is crucial. If you do not put the correct link, nothing will work. To find the correct link, go back to your wiki. Click Manage Wiki, then Files. Click on your file. It will bring you to a File Detail page. Right click on the name of your file, and click copy link location. As an example, mine is http://wchsradio.wikispaces.com/file/view/Matthew-Deonta-Porsha.mp3/109610567/Matthew-Deonta-Porsha.mp3.
<description> is simply a general description of what the episode is about. <pubDate> is the date that you published the episode. <enclosure> is also important. Inside it, put the same link that you put in <link> in quotation marks after url=. After length= you need to put the size in bytes. To find this, right click on the file on your computer and click Properties (Windows and Linux) or Get Info (Mac). Just use the file size that it gives you. Leave type=”audio/mpeg”/ as it is. Copy the blank code below and change the following fields:
-
<title>
-
<link>
-
<description>
-
<pubDate>
-
url=“ and length=“ (both inside of <enclosure>
<textarea rows=”8″ cols=”100″>
<item>
<title>ADD YOUR TITLE</title>
<link>ADD YOUR LINK</link>
<description>ADD YOUR DESCRIPTION</description>
<pubDate>WHEN DID YOU PUBLISH IT?</pubDate>
<enclosure url=”ADD THE SAME LINK”
length=”HOW BIG IS YOUR FILE?” type=”audio/mpeg”/>
</item>
</textarea>
Do that as many times as you want for as many episodes as you have. People will subscribe to your podcast and their program will automatically show or download all the episodes that you list. I did this project with two periods. I mad two podcasts, one fore each period. I included each group’s work as a separate episode in the main podcast for that period. When you are all done adding episodes (you can always add more later), adding the following lines to the bottom of your document. All these lines do is close the file.
<textarea rows=”2″ cols=”30″>
</channel>
</rss>
</textarea>
As a reference, here is what my file looks like.
The hard part is over. Save your file again to make sure that you don’t lose any of your hard work. Now go back to your wiki and upload the podcast.xml or whatever name you gave it. Just make sure that it ends in .xml. Here is a screenshot of the files currently stored on my wiki.
We are almost done. We just need the address of the xml file we just made so that people can subscribe to it. Click on the file from Files, under Manage Wiki. Right click on the file name and click Copy link location. Mine is: http://wchsradio.wikispaces.com/file/view/example.xml/109631379/example.xml.
Be careful here:
Correct: http://wchsradio.wikispaces.com/file/view/example.xml/109631379/example.xml.
Incorrect: http://wchsradio.wikispaces.com/file/detail/example.xml.
You can use the correct link to subscribe to the podcast in Google Reader or whatever RSS program you use. You can also embed it in your wiki so people browsing the wiki can see and listen to the episodes of the podcast right here. Click Edit on whatever page you would like to put the podcast on, then press the TV icon to add a widget. From the options, click RSS feed. Paste the link to your .xml file and, if you want, check the box for description.
Embed the RSS and then click save. It should look something like this.
You will have more links and descriptions if you added more episodes. I only have 1 in this screenshot because I was following the example exactly. From here, you can click the link to either listen to the episode in your browser or to download it so you can put it on an mp3 player.
There are some easier ways to podcast, but I am uncomfortable with subjecting my students and their work to unnecessary advertisements. If you feel the same way, this is one option for you to pursue. Do you have any other ways to podcast for free without advertisements? I avoided solutions that required owning a server as many readers will not have access to one. Please leave any suggestions in the comments.
