rss feeds

I had a  conversation with Lisa Featherstone of JISC TechDis recently about RSS feeds and podcasts and the fact that although those of us who know about them and use them think the technology is the bees' knees, chances are your neighbour on the street doesn't understand it. They don't know how it can enrich their lives. How did we get to the point where the RSS logo is everywhere, but so few people use the technology? We didn't have that problem with email, did we?
Maybe it's to do with RSS readers. Browsers are a way into the web, we all know that, but even then, most people don't know their Firefoxes from their Googles (What's the difference? Isn't it all just Google?). They might double-click on IE to go to Google but to them, they've just gone to Google. The fact that there are different browsers is confusing. So adding RSS readers into the mix is just asking for trouble.

Then there's the whole debate about where RSS is going. Some of the big names are starting to share less : bit.ly/QcmKIT which is a worrying trend. When I was in a training session recently, teaching the teachers how to use RSS to grab content into Moodle, they loved the idea, and could also see how useful it would be in their daily lives.

So, talking about how useful RSS is, if you don't currently subscribe to James Clay's elearning stuff podcasts, why not? An example episode here starring myself and Dave Sugden: podcast #080

RSS, podcasts and Joe Bloggs

If you don't currently subscribe to James Clay's elearning stuff podcasts, why not? Latest episode here starring myself and Dave Sugden: podcast #080

Enhanced podcasts

This has been niggling me for a while now, but at last I have some answers thanks to the brilliant Twitter community coming to my rescue.

Despite attending an event where I was shown how to create an enhanced podcast and watching Di Dawson's moletv video on it, I still couldn't get the podcast from Garageband into the podcast section of iTunes. I can understand why (podcasts need an rss feed), but I think my tutors have skipped a few vital steps and the missing links have puzzled me for months!

Basically, I thought that using Garageband to create an enhanced 'podcast' would mean that I could do it all offline - without getting RSS involved. Unfortunately, the file just won't play as an enhanced podcast on my iPhone - I only get the audio channel. The mystery of how to get pictures playing as well has remained a mystery until today (when I should have been working on another project, but that's life for you...)

See my other blog post http://lsmacblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/feeling-podcastically-stupid.html

And here's the answer: http://is.gd/b2keO

Thanks very much to @mrmackenzie and @damoward for their help!

My foray into podcasting on the PC

It's not been easy. I've explored it before, but now I've come back to try to show colleagues how easy it is, and it's not.

Let me explain: every free site that I've been to has been plagued with issues.

1. Mypodcast.com won't display my site, although it has a nice little free application that you can download on your PC to record mp3 files. (http://www.mypodcast.com/) REMEMBER TO PRESS SAVE AFTER RECORDING. I lost an interview because I clicked the little x on the top right too quickly instead of clicking SAVE first.
   
2. podomatic.com seems to be as complicated as Facebook in terms of knowing where to go and what to do. If I can't work it out in one minute, then it's no good for converting reticent tutors into using it.
   
3. Never mind, I thought I'd just post my mp3 on my blog to illustrate how easy that was to do. Another error uploading the file. Blogger refuses to play ball. I finally got it to work (see link below). However, Blogger doesn't host audio files so tutors would need to upload them to a public web space first.

I suspect your average tutor doesn't have web spaces, wouldn't normally use ftp and may not already have a blog site to start with.

Gabcast.com, introduced by Di Dawson on the m-champions MoLeNET Moodle, by contrast, was so easy you could blink and miss it. Fantastic and easy. Only problem is with the sound quality. Not sure if learners would enjoy listening to what sounds like a phone conversation week after week.

What really excites me about Gabcast, though, is that unlike the other podcasting solutions, it is truly mobile and allows learners to join in the creation of episodes quite easily. You simply let them have the phone number to dial, the channel number and password, and your class can be recording podcasts just like that!

I'm big on solutions that allow two-way communication, and Gabcast ticks all the right boxes for me so far. I know James is going to run a session on podcasting without Macs. By the end of the night, I may have something useful to add to his repertoire, or I may not! Let's see!

Here's the file I managed to link to this blog:

2008/gabcast.mp3

Overcome mp3 filters

Quick blog: I tried sending an mp3 file to some colleagues in colleges recently and in some instances, the email was blocked due to mp3s being filtered.
So I put the file into Movie Maker, stuck on a picture and saved it as a wmv.
This was received without a hitch. Hmmm...