Hi this is Bill Straub, instructor and technology specialist at College of the Redwoods. I work in the High Tech Center in Eureka, California. Today I want to talk to you a little bit a little bit about Podcasting and about how to make an accessible Podcast.
First of all what is a Podcast? Well more or less it's just downloadable audio or sometimes audio and video, that people can get from a computer server and then get it on their computer. Now what's great about it is that people can can easily take the file that they get (it's actually sometimes called pod catching). They can get that file and then they can drop it on to a portable player like an Apple iPod or an MP3 player or even they can take it to another computer. And what's nice about that is that students can get a lecture or some more information in an audio and/or video format and then they can take it with them so they can access that information when they're on the bus or waiting in line for the movie or when they're doing their laundry or when they're going for walk or any place that they can go and take this portable player with them. So it gives them one more chance to do their homework and to study. They can listen to your lecture or get some information from some other students. Now technically if you go to wikipedia.org the Wikipedia free Encyclopedia. W-I-K-I-P-E-D-I-A .org and type in "Podcasting." What it says is that it is the distribution of audio or video files such as radio programs or videos over the Internet using either RSS or atom syndication for listening on mobile devices and personal computers. RSS is really simple syndication and atom syndication is it it is like it is really simple syndication, just a lot more geeky and a lot more features. So it's not just downloadable, people can use aggregator software to sort of pull this sound file and/or video file... pull this file from a server where you put it up. And you can put it up on Blackboard.
Now the issue with accessibility and people with disabilities is that there might be some students or people listening to your Podcast who are deaf or hard of hearing, or they have a learning disability, and so they need the audio in more than one format. Someone who is deaf or hard of hearing is not going to be able to hear it, so what you need to do is also... any time you provide a Podcast on a District server, you will also need to provide a transcript. A transcript means that you just typed it out. Now technically you could use Dragon NaturallySpeaking and that's what I am going to use to make the transcript of this Podcast. You use Dragon NaturallySpeaking and if you've trained and if you go back and correct all the mistakes that Dragon made with it, than you can make a transcript fairly easily. I still need to have it all typed out and provide a link next to the Podcast links so that people can get that transcript.
Now if the Vodcast or the video Podcast also contains video, then it needs to be captioned just like any other educational video.
For more information on this please visit the Accessibility Web Site: hightech.redwoods.edu/accessibility and look for the link for Podcast. High Tech is H-I-G-H-T-E-C-H, so hightech, all one word, dot redwoods dot .edu slash accessibility.
Have a nice day.