Podcasts and Videocasts

Podcasts and Videocasts, presented by Doris Munson from EWU, on Thursday was largely a waste of time. I’d hoped to learn how libraries were actually USING podcasting with their customers. Unfortunately, the presenter isn’t actually using them with her students. She was experimenting with podcasting and vidcasting (Yes, to me they’re vids, not videos. My fannish roots are showing. Live with it.) because she felt they were technologies she should be familiar with. (I’ve been experimenting too, for that very reason. 23 Things, anyone? I’ve got Audacity loaded on my new laptop and everything. But I want to know how experienced institutions are using podcasts & vidcasts, not amateurs.) Based on her samples, Doris started experimenting a mere two weeks prior to the presentation. When questioned about equipment specifics, she waffled and refused to make recommendations. Audience members contributed much more useful information. (Invest in a Flip, people. They're at http://www.theflip.com/. They retail for ~$ 150 and up and got rave reviews from the audience. The audience also suggested that if you don’t have a webcam or vidcam, save powerpoint frames as .jpegs and import them and scanned photos into moviemaker and make a movie of slides.) Doris really had no clear idea how these technologies would be used in a library setting and seemed to focus more on their social use.

She did demonstrate two sound recording programs, RecordPad (http://www.nch.com.au/recordpad/index.html) that retails for ~$50 (she quoted under $30 but the website disagrees) and Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/) that anyone can download for free. She implied that Audacity was more difficult to use as it required downloading a separate plug-in in order to save files as mp3s. C’mon people—yes, it DOES need the extra plug-in. But the download site clearly identifies the plug in, explains why you want it, explains they can’t package it with Audacity for licensing reasons, and links you directly to the site where you can download the plug-in for FREE. It’s not rocket science.

She also demonstrated Debut Video Capture (available for free at http://www.nchsoftware.com/capture/index.html) and Windows Movie Maker which comes preloaded these days with Windows. I now have both on my new laptop, but haven’t yet had the chance to closely compare the two. (For the record, I HATE, HATE, HATE how I look on video and I look worse from the embedded webcam in my laptop. But I digress.)

My impression is that the presenter was largely unfamiliar with social networking tools in general. She spent over 15 minutes discussing and enthusing about how you could change the templates and fonts on PodBean (http://www.podbean.com/) a 3rd party hosting & subscription site. (It looks like they’re using Blogger templates, BTW.) FIFTEEN MINUTES of “look at the pretty colors.” Yes, you want the site where you’re hosting your materials to be attractive. And easy to use. But for our purposes, I doubt we’d bother to use a 3rd party site. If we’re creating podcasts, surely we’d be hosting them at our organization’s site? Sure, there are storage and bandwidth limitations to take into consideration. But I suspect we’ve got more space on our server than the free hosts…and if we go with a 3rd party site we lose our branding. Is it worth it to host elsewhere in the hopes of picking up subscribers who aren’t necessarily part of your customer base? In bandwidth savings? It all depends on what you’re using the podcasts and vidcasts for, and unfortunately, the presenter didn’t have a clear goal in mind.

Doris didn’t have a handout, naturally. She did recommend Voices.com for a sample script of how to script your podcast, but I couldn’t find one there. Weirdly enough, I later found the Voices podcasting guide through an ad on Podbean. (That’s probably how Doris found it, too.) It’s here, and it’s free for the downloading. It’s not bad, but for anyone who’d like to know more about podcasting, I’d suggest checking out ALA’s Teen Tech Guide “Teens Podcasting @ Your Library”, found here: http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/yalsa/teentechweek/ttw08/resourcesabcd/techguide_podcast.pdf. It provides a more thorough, technical, and practical overview of podcasting than this session.