Mod 4 - Assignment 4: Discuss the Experience

As an Andy Rooney Fan, I subscribe to the CBS News Poscasts (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/07/06/utility/main706903.shtml) for Andy Rooney episodes missed.

Pluses to sites that offers:

• Other topics are available to review versus just one specific, like that of Andy Rooney. Saves from subscribing to many individual sites, where as this site offers multiple options to view.
  
• Offers multiple venue, depending on personal preference (listen or download nice), or technology already set up on your computer.
  

Several issues using some commercial sites are:

• Advertisements preceding several but not all podcasts/iTunes. While it cannot be closed before the complete ad displays, one can mute the ads, while waiting for the feature.
  
• If existing technology (PC/MAC) software applications are not completely compatible, e.g., iTunes, a prompt displays to suggest adding an extention needed for their file type to the iTunes software application. This may not be reversible, resulting in interfering with the use of previous files.

The challenge in presenting a script to a live audience is, no retakes. Those that are charismatic presenters are fortunate compared to those of us who fumble along famously, or not. For me, the hardest part is preparing the script to roll out like a casual conversation between friends. Never have mastered that quality while writing, unfortunately. As for retakes on audios, Hmmm, it can be counted as rehearsals.

And, this website, the Higher Education Podcast Repository (interesting concept, don't you think?), has a rubric which attempts to evaluate the quality of higher ed. podcasts. Marwin Britto thought this might be of interest since we are all finding that the range of the quality of podcasts vary greatly.

Mod 4 -Assignment 1: Subscribe to Other Podcasts

There are lots of places you can go to subscribe to other podcasts. Beyond individual sites (journals, companies such as Disneyland), you can go to sites that have thousands of video and audio podcasts. Three popular ones are YouTube (mainly video), Odeo, and iTunes.

Let’s subscribe to some other podcasts. Go to the podcasts – find the subscribe buttons, and put the RSS code in your BlogBridge.

Mod 4 - Your Podcasts

This article discusses ten ways to improve your podcasts. There is no priority to their listing, though the first five tips cover some of the basics: getting a good microphone, proper microphone technique, show preparation, reducing noise, and formats; the latter five are more concerned with the content of your show.

Next, are a few ways How-To: Podcasting.

Mod 4 -Podcasting

Objectives

At the end of this section you will:

- understand what podcasting is and how it is used in higher education
- learn to locate and subscribe to podcasts
- become practiced in creating and publishing podcasts
- evaluate the content of podcasts produced by classmates