Archive for the ‘podcasting’ Category »
My colleague Rachel Borchardt and I are giving a session at the GOLD/GALILEO Users Group Conference on August 1st in Athens, GA. Our presentation is:
“Let Your Audience Hear You: Creating an Instructional Podcast”
Interested in publishing an instructional podcast at your library? Learn the steps to design, plan and produce a podcast for your students using inexpensive hardware and mostly free software. We will discuss both instructional design and technological how-to, drawing on our experiences producing Woodruff Library’s Survival Guide podcast for undergraduates. We will include topics such as technology tools, publicity, “iTunes U”, and involving tech-shy colleagues.
I attended this conference last year and it really rocked — I came away with more ideas and contacts than I usually do from a day at ALA. I’m particularly excited to be co-presenting with Rachel, since she and I have been working on this together for quite a while and it’ll be great to share some of what we’ve learned doing it.
Since this takes place about a week before I finish my MLIS degree, the timing seems particularly auspicious.
Games in Libraries podcast
If you’ve been dying to hear my opinion of the Lego Star Wars video game (and if you’re reading this, I know you have), you’re in luck. My good friend Beth Gallaway invited me to do a game review on the Games in Libraries podcast.
Press the play button below or check it out on the GIL site.
[photo credit: digital_stability]
Podcast: “Fall Preview”
This is the last library podcast episode we’re producing for students until the fall. We took a different tack this time and are promoting projects we’ll be working on over the summer that they can expect to see when they come back to school.
Slideshare, that’s not a podcast
Slideshare offers a very cool feature they call “slidecasting,” syncing audio with a slide presentation.
Unfortunately, they not only make the common mistake of referring to an mp3 as a podcast, they’re actually using an RSS icon to indicate an mp3.
I keep meaning to do more with Slideshare. It seems like it would be a great way to do tutorials and such. We’ve got an audio tour in the works that’s basically a slideshow with narration even though we’re producing it as Quicktime video. I should consider doing a Slideshare version.
I’m having an article published in the Library Instruction Round Table newsletter (well, the next two; it’s in two parts). It’s a short discussion of why we’re experimenting with podcasting, how we’re approaching it as an instructional tool and a bit about the technology we’re using.
It’s too short, really, and just scratches the surface, but I thought I’d post it here anyway. At some point when I have more time I’d like to write a longer one that goes through the process from start to finish.
Anyway, I’ve stuck it on my Projects page for those of you who can’t find LIRT News on your newsstand: Creating an Instructional Library Podcast.
Podcast episode: “Library Mythbusters”
Rachel and I tried something a little different this time — instead of talking about a specific resource in the library, she suggested we do an episode talking about library myths and misconceptions (like “librarians read all day”). We tried to steer the conversation toward promoting library services that students might not know about, but I was awfully rambling and not sure how well I did at that!
On Free Audiobooks
I’ve mentioned before that I’m starting a tiny crusade to get some good Creative Commons licensed material cataloged at my library of employment. (I also just asked them to catalog Library Student Journal, which is [w00t] publishing my article “Open Source Software in Museums,” about which I’m very excited.)
At the end of every semester, students preparing to travel home over break start asking the reference desk about audiobooks to listen to while they drive or fly. This being an academic research library, we tend not to collect many — we have like ten on CD in the collection, I think.
I’m going to put together a web guide on free downloadable audiobooks to go up in time for the end of the spring semester. For one thing, I’m poking around to compile a list of library systems in the Atlanta area that have them in their collection (which prompted me to finally get a library card). I also listen to a lot of fiction podcasts, and I’m going to add as many as possible to my web guide.
[Note: I'm looking for more good ideas to add to my list. Please drop a comment or e-mail if you have any suggestions for free downloadable audiobooks, ideally in formats suitable for loading onto portable media players.]
I was listening to an episode of Escape Pod this morning in which the editor talks about his plans to do more to promote the podcast, and I thought, “Hey, why don’t we have stuff like this in our catalog? It would certainly make it easier for our users to find audio fiction.” So I asked our catalog department to add it — hopefully they will agree that this is a good idea, and since it’s already got a Worldcat entry I can see I’m not the first person to think of it.
[Photo credit: dalydose via Flickr]
Podcast episode: Government Documents
On Friday we recorded a new episode of our podcast for undergrads, the Library Survival Guide (the web page is ugly because of something weird in the way I’m including the RSS feed in the page; I’m going to work on it as soon as I have time!). I’m really pleased that a couple of my colleagues actually approached me with an idea for an episode this time, and asked to be involved. Until now Rachel and I have been coming up with episode ideas and asking an expert to sit in and let us interview them. I’m pretty happy with this episode.
100 Ways to Use Your iPod to Learn and Study Better
via iLibrarian.
Of course, now that I have a non-iPod media player, some of these may not do me any good — I know iPods can handle text (though I never used that feature), not so sure about my Zen. Still, tons of links and info here I’d never seen before!
My institution just announced a contract with iTunes U. I’m going to be as involved as possible with the pilot program this fall, and I’m really excited. I’ve really felt like there’s a bottleneck in my team, as far as producing a/v materials goes — there are only two or three of us doing it, and I think there’s a sense that it’s hard and mysterious.
My sense of how iTunes U works is that it will make the publishing part very easy, and I’m hoping that this will get the ball rolling and inspire more people at my library to record instruction materials. As I’ve mentioned before, our real problem with producing podcasts has been the lack of an easy publishing platform, so this should remove that hurdle.
