| The 2009 ABLE conference at the University of Delaware got off to a great start for me. The first major workshop I attended on Wednesday morning was about podcasting, and I am really glad I went. The session itself, in the well-appointed student media lab, was extremely informative. And the presenter, Paul Hyde, was both knowledgeable and helpful. In short, the long walk from the dorms to the Morris Library turned out to be well worth the trip.
We began by talking about the characteristics that distinguish podcasts. We learned that podcasts should be brief (just a few minutes long), and personal. Optimally, a podcast does not simply repeat content from the textbook or lab manual. Instead, it is more interesting to connect that material to a current event or to an in-class topic of discussion, or to reflect on the importance or meaning of the content.
We then listened to a few examples of podcasts from thenakedscientists.com, itunesU, and NIH. These samples revealed another important characteristic of podcasts: Interested people should be able to subscribe to them so that new editions are automatically downloaded for listening at the subscriber’s convenience.
The workshop also briefly mentioned the tantalizing possibility of assigning podcasts for students to create themselves. The “7 Things You Should Know About Podcasting” handout at http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7003.pdf lists a few ideas on that topic. (Even more resources are available at the “Where Can I Learn More?” handout at http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI8005f.pdf).
After the introduction, we split into separate computer labs for Windows and Mac users. Along with the other Mac people, I learned how to use GarageBand to record a script introducing the University of Delaware. We added campus photos that were already provided, and the instructors showed us how to find royalty-free free music clips by searching the internet for "publicly available songs and sounds" or by visiting freeplaymusic.com or wikimedia commons. We spliced pieces of the different tracks together and learned to control the volume of each track separately. The last step was to export the product to AAC format (for video podcasts) or .mp3 format (for audio-only podcasts).
The result of this brief training session was a video podcast containing a series of campus photos accompanied by a musical introduction and then our own voices describing the campus.
Paul and his assistant were also kind enough to assist me with a question about my digital voice recorder, which I have used for everything from family interviews to recording sounds on the streets of Istanbul. My digital recorder saves the audio files in .wma format, which GarageBand cannot import. I learned that the website http://www.mediaconverter.org/ converts .wma files to .mp3 for free, with a limit of five files per day.
I didn’t make it to the followup session on Friday afternoon, thanks to an unfortunate gastronomic encounter with a softshell crab on Thursday night. As a result, I didn’t learn how to make my podcast subscribable via and RSS feed. However, the “How to Podcast” handout (www.udel.edu/smdc/training/able) gives more information about that aspect of podcasting.
 Even without the benefit of the Friday session, this workshop still resulted in a tangible product that anyone can view on the internet. Mark Walvoord and I collaborated on a video podcast featuring the impressions of first-time ABLE meeting attendees. Mark was in charge of taking pictures, while my job was to record interviews with new ABLE members on my trusty digital voice recorder. We spent most of the meeting collecting material, then we spliced the audio files together on the plane from Philadelphia to Oklahoma City. Mark added the photos and text slides later. You can see the fruits of our labor at http://www.ableweb.org/conf/ABLE09newbies.m4a. New members, you make ABLE look great!
You can also take a look at http://www.ableweb.org/conf/media/media.html to see the podcast created by Bob Hodson (2009 ABLE Host at the University of Delaware) about our conference and a podcast created by Karin Readel which summarizes the Ashland Stream Ecology major workshop.
In short, this workshop was valuable to me for several reasons. First, I always thought of podcasts as being audio-only, and I was pleased to learn how to add the visual element. Second, not being musically inclined, I used to view the GarageBand icon on my Mac laptop with suspicion. But GarageBand turned out to be extremely easy to use. As a result, I subsequently ventured into iMovie, another once-scary application on my Mac, and used it to produce some short videos. I never would have done that without having attended the podcasting workshop! Third, as both a biology instructor and a textbook author, I now see how easy it would be to create podcasts that relate current events to classroom or book content.
Thank you to Paul Hyde and the University of Delaware for sharing your well-appointed student media lab with ABLE! Also, Mark and I appreciate the new members who took the time to share their thoughts and impressions.
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