podcasting tools

[Craig]

I have availability to some money and have been asked to set up a podcsting studio at a large middle school. I am looking at a mac book pro, as my computing machine. I would like a usb mixer, 2 mics with stands, and necessary software. Does any one have any suggestions/recommendations as to tools/brands etc.? Thanks for the help.

[Julie Lindsay]

Craig, the person I recommend you talk to about this is Chris Chater, also a member of this Ning
http://flatclassrooms.ning.com/xn/detail/u_3cxzwl90mhfb

Good luck! Julie

[Craig]

Thanks for the heads up. I will try connecting with Chris.

[James McConville]

Hi Craig,

My favourite definitive podcasting guide is from Stephan Ridgway. Check out his wiki here:

http://sridgway.wikispaces.com/IntroductionToPodcasting

James

[Craig]

Great resource, thanks.

[Kelly]

I have done podcasting a few ways. Garageband is the easiest editing tool in my opinion. However, for recording into... sometimes it gets slowed downed during the recording and may crash. This becomes very frustrating for the students. In addition, if you have a limited amount of computers, this could become difficul to do multiple podcasts.

My suggestion is to invest in some large iPods and some microphones that attach onto the iPods. There are many out there and none are really better than the other. Students can record their podcasts into the iPod from anywhere in the school.

Then make sure to set the iPods up for 'sync manually.' This way when you plug in the iPods, instead of syncing to a particular library, you can easily grab the recording from the iPod and move it to your desktop. Then you can put the recording into Garageband, edit it and also enhance the cast. The you can export the podcast to iTunes and actually move it back onto the iPod (hopefully a students) and they can have it to take with them anywhere.

There is a guy who taught podcasting at an FETconference. His name is Rick Reece. He offered a step by step guideline at one time and also "how to's' for making professional enhanced podcasts. He is very helpful and I think he is either an Apple educator or adobe educator.

If you do a search for him, you may be able to find his website.

Hope this helps.
BTW: the microphones can become a pain, and if they are not of the highest quality you can often hear crackling noise.

[Craig]

Thanks Kelly your ideas are much appreciated. I did purchase a couple of iPods with belkin mic attachments thinking this would be good for kids in the field but I think you are correct in that they could be used for much more than that. I purchased a mac book pro, alesis usb2.0 mixer, and 2 audio technica condensor mics as the base of this system. I have been playing with garage band and am finding it very easy to work with. I hope to have students and teachers working with shortly.

[Durff]

Get a Snowball mic for recording and several headsets for editing. Audacity is a great audio editor and free. Download it to the machines in your podcasting studio along with the llame software. Then record a short clip,export as an mp3 and associate the llame file with Audacity. Then students won't have to worry with it. Posting audio to Podomatic works very well. Podomatic is free and gives you the embed code for a player on your webpage. Here is my poor example made for Computer6, made with all free tools except the hardware. I used a $20 headset to record. I use music from freeplay Also, I use cellphones to record audio from anywhere in the school. I have students call into Gabcast (Gcast does it too) and the audio is posted into a podcast automatically. You may want more editing than my shortcut allows. We use what we have, and here more have cellphones than iPods with mics.

[Craig]

Yes, the snowball and snowflake mics were recommended. I ended going with 2 xlr condensor mics going into a mixing board. I have actually used the exact setup you are talking about in the past. Used audacity and podomatic and did have a student podcast on iTunes as well as podomatic and the school home page. It did work nicely but since the building I was asked to this with had some grant money thought it would be nice to go the mac route and create something on the more professional side. For now the rest of the district will still be using pc's and audacity to do their stuff. I have played with gcast and know of gabcast and appreciate the recommendation as I tend to forget about them and their potential as a powerful tool in my podcasting arsenal. Thanks for the thoughts.