What is Podcasting

Think of Podcasts as Radio on demand where you choose the radio show and when you'll listen to it.
You don't need an ipod to play them, any mp3 player or computer can do it.
Technically Podcasts are audio or video files wrapped in a little bit of rss code.

Why Podcast ?

Podcasting has important accessibility implications.
Due to an accident one of my students can see but not read.
Now she can listen to the material.
However Podcasting is not just applicable to users with 'special needs', we all have accessibility issues.

Everyone's ability to access material changes all the time.
While walking down the street or driving we do not usually have access to the internet nor can we read material (safely).
However by downloading podcasts to our mp3 player we can listen to material while doing either of these things.

Control is transferred to the user, they control when they will access the podcasts. This is as it should be.

Imagine working on a complicated job in a workshop.
Now you can listen to an audio file describing what to do, as you do it.

Just in Time learning becomes a reality.

Listening to a Podcast

• open it, if they want to hear your audio file immediately, or
• save it to their computer or mp3 player for later access.

Building a Podcast

1. Once you have picked your topic, for example a presentation you wish to deliver.

2. You Record and Save your message as an audio file (mp3) file using free software such as Audacity.

3. Next you wrap your audio file in a little RSS (see a typical rssfile).

4. Upload both your mp3 file and the xml/rss file to your website and add a link to your rss file and/or your .mp3 file on a webpage.

5. Advertise your webpage link to your clients.