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[kamiakin]

I am just getting into podcasting myself, but two pieces of advice:

1) Be careful about creating anything inside of a commercial platform. If you create podcasts withing BB are they locked in Blackboard? If so just create MP3 files on your computer and upload them--so that you still have the files when your school drops BB for something else next year.

2) Don't make the perfect the enemy of the good. Start off quick and dirty and get some stuff up. You will get better.

[magistra]

In BB Vista, at least, you (and the students) can download and save the files, so it's no problem putting them on your own computer after the fact.  They play in itunes and mediaplayer. 

I should be so lucky as to have our school switch!  Haven't you heard?  Bb is taking over the world....

[dept_geek]

Some products, like Camtasia, allow you to also save as a Flash + HTML combination. This combination can be placed on your website (like to the HTML), in BB (in the non-webct version, you zip all the files together, upload the zip file, and "unpackage the file", again linking to the HTML).

You can also save as WMV, iPod, and a few others.

But, Camtasia is expensive. See if what you have does the trick before investing.

[cc_alan]

I'm thinking of creating mini-lectures (no more than 10 minutes) in order to get around my lack of experience avoid monotony. How long are other people's podcasts? Does length matter -- or do you just assume that students will listen to podcasts in pieces, if they're much longer?

I would suggest short and covering only a single piece of some topic. Label them well, and students will (er.. should.. er... mostly like will.. er.... might) listen to what they need to get better at your subject.

Practice before recording.

I don't do online teaching but I saw "podcast" so I jumped over.

I've wanted to do podcasts for some time for my chemistry classes but I just haven't taken the time to do any. I bought ProfCast so I could make podcasts out of some of my PowerPoint files. The idea of small, targeted files is a good one, I think.

Something of substance but not too long that students avoid them.

Alan

[goldenapple]

Today I was working on how to create audio material and I was introduced to Jing. I haven't used it yet, so for other newbies, I'll pass on my impressions.

Here's the idea: Jing lets you make a little video of what is happening on your desktop, so first of all, I can use it to show students how the course webpage works (where stuff is, how to use it, etc.). And even better, it would allow me to display a student's paper or a piece of text and record myself talking about it while highlighting different pieces. The files can then be saved to the Jing server or to our own as urls.

The movies are limited to 5 minutes, but considering that Jing is free, I can live with that. And it seems as if it could be an efficient way to give paper feedback, since I'd be forced to limit my comments.

Anyway, it's another audio option that may be handy.

[hotrod]

I've had a couple of professors that use Screencast

http://www.screencast.com/