Enhanced podcasts are audio podcasts with additional ‘built-in’ functions to aid the listener. One example of a built-in function is a small slide-show with its own audio commentary. Another example is podcasts split into ‘chapters’ by offering points within the audio track for students to ‘jump to’ to aid their ‘navigation’ and replay of certain sections.
If you have some experience of creating audio podcasts and want to offer more support to your learners, enhancing podcasts is a fairly easy and cheap way of adding value. But at the time of writing there are some software and technical restrictions for creating and playing back enhanced podcasts.
Enhanced podcasts are usually produced using Apple computers, equipped with appropriate software, such as GarageBand. For playing them your students must have access to Apple’s Quicktime player or iTunes software and an actual iPod, not any other make of MP3 player.
Microsoft are responding to Apple with their own ‘solution’ to enhance podcasting. As we write, audio and video files can be synchronized with Microsoft Producer, which is a free add-on for Microsoft PowerPoint. An alternative is to use Microsoft Movie Maker which is part of the Windows operating system. Movie Maker allows for the integration of images at predefined points on an imported pre-recorded audio file. Both Producer and Movie Maker produce output files with the limitation that they are only viewable using Microsoft Internet Explorer software.
Microsoft Windows Media files can be viewed on PDAs running the Windows Mobile operating system but are inaccessible via other devices such as the iPod. However, free software from Videora (videora.com) converts most of the popular multi-media file formats to that suitable for viewing on the iPod.
Commercial software is available for producing enhanced podcasts from Kudlian Soft (kudlian.net). ‘Podcaster’ software is available for both the Apple and Microsoft operating systems and the time of writing, cost less than $30; it requires no more additional hardware than that discussed above. ‘Podcaster’ allows the addition of sub-titles to images, to improve accessibility, and hyperlinks can be embedded to direct students to documents on the institutional Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), web pages on the internet or to other podcasts.
We expect that some of these restrictions will be removed before long, so it’s worth checking the current position when you are ready to give enhancing a try.
Creating enhanced podcasts is only slightly more complicated than doing so for audio podcasts. Recording the audio part is the same as usual. Adding graphics involves ‘dragging and dropping’ slides, photographs or other static material into your chosen software tool, matching the image on screen to the right point in audio track and typing in subtitles and hyperlinks in a separate area. The cost of creating enhanced podcasts is therefore a little more than audio, but you may feel that the podcasts become better paced and can be more easily embedded in other learning materials. |
