I got an idea over the weekend to set up an RSS feed to a Through Our Parents' Eyes page that announces additions and updates to the site. Low and behold, it worked! If you go to the site, you will spot the ubiquitous orange XML icon that is seemingly used by anyone pushing out an RSS feed. In this case, you can grab the URL to plug into your aggregator or, even better, use Firefox and just click on the little orange icon that shows up on the Announcements page that lets you subscribe to it as a Live Bookmark.
May 2005 Archives
Visit the LTC's Podcasting page for Campus Programs for podcasts of Barbara Hoffman's keynote presentation at the May 5th LTS Showcase and for the afternoon panel discussion.
These are two excellent examples of how we add value to the programs we hold at the UA. If you are involved in a campus program, think about contacting the LTC to have the sessions recorded (audio or video) and having us then make them available for podcasting.
Of course, if someone does not have an MP3 player, the MP3 file can be downloaded to ones desktop and played. Visit the Podcasting website How To page to learn more.
Good news! iTunes next release will include the capability to subscribe to podcasts. Read two announcements posted in late May in: O'Reilly Radar and BBC NewsWatch
Hank points out that notifications do not happen automatically just because you an email address is added to your notifications list.
"Notifications are never sent automatically when you post a new entry. To send a notification to your readers on a particular entry, select that entry for editing. In the Send a notification section, enter the text of the message you would like to send. You can also include the excerpt from your entry, or the entire body of your entry, by checking either of the checkboxes to the right. The message sent to your readers will include a link to the entry, followed by the message that you enter."
So, what you need to do is to scroll down on your entry page and click in the box down the bottom of the page that reads "Include entire entry body" to get the notification sent. I had been assuming it did this automatically--it doesn't. I proved the old saying about what happens when you assume. Seems from my test today that it will send the notification whether you click in the box and click either of the send buttons.
If you visit the campus programs page on the podcasting website, you'll see I am adding MP3s of a couple of the sessions from the Learning Technologies Showcase. BTW, we now have podcasting.arizona.edu as the URL to pull the site up.
With the 3.16 upgrade installed to Movable Type, it looks like the capability to subscribe to email notifications for blog entries is working. What does that mean? It means, there I (or you if you have the privleges to edit your main template) can add an HTML form to your homepage. Visitors can then subscribe to receive emails when a new entry is added to the blog. Check it out on my blog in the upper part of the right side of the homepage.
If you have the privileges on your blog, you can download this Download file text file with the HTML and paste it into your main template. Otherwise, I'll be glad to do it for you.
Here's what it looks like.
Jim found a converter for RealPlayer files that converts them from .rm to MP3 and WAV. It's called RM Converter and was only $25 for an Internet downloadable copy. Although the conversion process is slow going, it does a good job. I make the WAV file and drag and drop that into my Oggdrop and it converts the WAV to Ogg Vorbis in about 2 seconds.
I had a couple rather large Real files from the Little Cowpuncher oral history project on my desktop computer. As Real files, one is 196MB and the second is 46MB. Of course, they are video and converting them to MP3 and Ogg Vorbis is only audio, but the difference in file size is 8.7MB and 4.5MB for the MP3s and 5.8MB and 1.8MB for the Ogg Vorbis files.
The reason this is so important is that we have a lot of Real video of lectures and this is an easy, not to mention inexpensive, way to convert them for podcasting. I added them to the Campus Programs page on the podcasting website.
Got a good question in the comment section from Pithamber. He wrote:
How do we record and "broadcast" the mp3 files? It is not clear from the information you provided. Do we use any audio recording program and post them to class websites?
I think there are a few ways to do this that I can think of and probably more that I am not thinking of as I compose this blog entry. One thing that I've been doing is recording on my desktop using a standard PC microphone plugged into the appropriate audio jack on the audio card in the PC. The software I am using is Audacity, an open source application available from sourceforge. I've been very happy with it and know of others using it at other universities who also recommend it. Using audacity, I can record and then export the audio to a WAV, MP3, or Ogg Vorbis file format. I plan to record some content for the course I'm teaching this summer, such as audio to accompany a powerpoint presentation (not reading slides but adding to what is on the slides) and to do a welcome message to the course.
For other projects, we may want to set the speaker up in media services to record the audio and the media services unit will convert it to MP3. We're learning as we're going forward on this which leads me to think we exploring different options and are a ways from doing best practices.
Anyone with ideas or suggestions is definitely welcome to share them.
Jeff Imig and I reviewed podcasting to interested persons who stopped by the table at the Learning Technology Showcase today. Two updates that I hope will be of interest to you. One is the new interface that Mike Martelle, the LTC's graphics guru, designed for the website and second is the poster that Mike created today about podcasting. Check them both out.
