We PODCAST

Wednesday 28th November saw the launch day at New College of the MoleNet podcasting project. The day was well attended with M-Champions and senior management representatives from Swindon, Cirencester and Wiltshire colleges, technicians, the local press and New College’s Principal Graham Taylor. The highlight for me was the presentation and training given by Apple Distinguished Educator David Baugh, who is currently ICT Advisor to Denbighshire schools. David spent the morning talking through the basics of podcasting before taking our M-Champions through the process of creating an enhanced podcast using Garageband on an iMac, and a basic podcast using Audacity on a Windows PC. On the iMacs we used the built-in mics to create a short piece of audio, then added images via the built-in iSight cameras. David also demonstrated how to add URLs and Chapter Markers before saving the podcast as an mp4 file in iTunes and listening to our masterpieces.

Feedback from participants suggested they preferred the creativity and fun element of creating podcasts using iLife, although access to Macs may be an issue as New College is predominately a Windows environment. We are currently investigating the possibility of using either an Apple Mobile Classroom or stand-alone iMacs set-up as ‘podcasting workstations’ (or possibly a combination of the two).

David’s presentation is available to view here although the sound quality is not great.

There is also a local media report on SwindonWeb.