edPodcasting & Video casting... where to begin?

[Tandy Kibbler]

I've been assigned the task to explore these two forms of technology. I'll give a brief background of what we are intending to do. My library recently was awarded the Big Read grant... During our last Big Read, we used blogs, to generate more dicussion, however, it didn't see much activitiy.

So, our Big Read coordinator is still planning to use a blog, but I suggested to offer podcasting and videocasting, some (or all) of the book discussions that will be taking place. The book that was selected is The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett.

As for as the video casting goes, it seems simple enough to just use the library's digi. camera to record the discussions and upload to YouTube??That's what I at least have in mind.
Is that what you would recommend?
Is there a better way?
Is there anything different than YouTube out there?
Is there any software that one would recommend for editing the video and audio content from the camera?

Now, podcasting, I admit I'm a little unsure about that all. In some of my web searching, I came across one source that mentioned using the PC with the mike attached to it to record the audio. We have a laptop, so that would work just fine, *I'm thinking*. However, I don't know how these book discussions will be set up, everyone sitting in a circle or exactly what.

Is there a better way or another option than using a PC? How about editing software? Any free opensource programs out there?
Can these MP3 files be setup to play online instead of downloading? I think we would want to offer both options for the podcasts.

I'm sure I'll have more questions about this. TIA for the help.

[Mary Kyle]

YouTube works great and a lot of libraries use it. However they do have limits on file size and length of video. If you are trying to post an hour long book discussion you will get frustrated with them, I think they have about a 10 minute limit. Not sure who gives a longer limit, though you might check with Yahoo video.

As to editing software there are a lot out there and it depends on how complex you want to get and what OS your computer runs. If you have Mac's all of them have a pretty good video editing software called iMovie. For more high-end go to Final Cut. If you only have Windows PC's you can try Windows Movie Maker, a free download for XP and Vista. High-end for this would be Adobe Premier. Of course some Digital Camcorders have bundled editing software with them too.

Audio Podcasts are another matter. You can create your podcast with any audio editing software and post to a podcast host. One that offers free podcast hosting is Odeo. They have a one hour and 50mb limit to individual uploaded files. There is no limit to number of files hosted on Odeo. You can either record with any audio editing tool or use the online recording software to create your podcast (you will need to be sure your flash player is up to date for this. There is a freeware for Audio editing that works very well. It's called Audacity. If you use Odeo to pst your files you can imbed their player in a webpage or blog and people may listen as a streming file though there is still a buffering time but no full download.

[Tandy Kibbler]

Thanks for the info. I'm currently looking into digital voice recorders. If our discussions turn out to be anything like our last discussions of our last Big Read, than a dvr will do nicely. We haven't had large discussion groups, but maybe doing something techy will get people interested in what we are doing with the Big Read.