Power to the Pod People: Design Your Own Podcast
Stephanie Pau, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, USA
Tim Svenonius, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, USA
Tana Johnson, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, USA
http://www.sfmoma.org/podcasts
How can I create a dynamic podcast for my museum? Attend Power to the Pod People: Design Your Own Podcast and learn the basics of podcast creation. The half-day course is presented by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art's Interactive Educational Technologies group – winners of MW 2007 Best of the Web for their podcast series SFMOMA Artcasts. The team brings experience in video and audio editing, content development, HTML and Flash programming, Web authoring and publishing, and podcasting.
Power to the Pod People will encompass all aspects of the podcasting process: scripting, digital recording, downloading audio, audio editing, publishing, and loading onto the iPod via iTunes. The workshop will begin with a brief overview of the technology required to produce a podcast, and will include handouts explaining RSS feeds, content aggregators, digital audio formatting, and online resources. Participants will work in small groups to make their own podcasts based on objects and texts brought by the instructors. As well, people may bring their own ideas for a podcast and their own laptops for the editing portion of the class.
Detailed Schedule:
- Introduction to Museum Podcasting
- Recording and Editing (overview)
- Recording and Editing (hands-on)
- Exporting, export formats and RSS (overview)
- Export, upload, and showcase
Introduction to Museum Podcasting (9:15)
We'll start by getting a sense for the attendees' experience of podcasting. This will help us gauge how long to spend on the basics, and how deep to go into the techie stuff.
First, what are podcasts? We'll hear a few short samples of museum offerings
Planning and Scripting (9:30)
To start the hands-on portion, we'll break into groups and ask each group to do the following:
Plan your podcast. First, imagine a fun scenario for creating a podcast. Since you're working with people from other institutions, you'll have to do a little role-playing and pretend you all work together. How do you want your audiences to use the podcast? How do you intend them to be distibuted? (i.e., will you supply the hardware, or a docking station? Do you want users to download it at home?) Is it based on a particular object, exhibition, or concept you would like to teach?
Script. Write a script for a one- or two-minute track. You may think of this as the intro segment to your podcast series, or a single audio 'stop'. Or, think about this as the teaser to get visitors interested in your new podcasts!
We'll give out a sample script from one of SFMOMA's Artcasts to illustrate how we use interview transcripts.
We'll then describe the tools and workflow necessary for scripting, recording and editing
- Recording -- devices ranging from the iTalk to the Marantz
- Editing (Final Cut Pro, iMovie (Mac), Audacity (cross platform))
Production
Record. (about 10:00)
Groups whose scripts are ready may begin recording. We'll have one Marantz digital recorder, one iTalk and one PC set up to record; if you have a device with you, or if you want to record using your laptop, go for it. When a group finishes recording, we'll download the audio and pass the recorder to the next group.
Coffee Break 10:50 – 11:00
Mixing (10:40)
Once everyone records, the mixing demo begins. We'll bring one example into GarageBand and do some editing. Ideally, we'll lay in sound effects or music.
We'll show how to add images in GarageBand, and then show export settings. We'll discuss export formats and compression options, then give a brief overview of RSS. RSS is described in greater detail in the handout.
Brief overview of xml (11:30)
Every podcast needs to have an .xml file containing specific metadata it in order for iTunes or other content aggregators to find it online. We'll look at the site FeedforAll and show you how to create a basic xml document for your group's podcast.
Export and upload (12:00)
At this stage every group should have an audio segment in GarageBand or Audacity.
We'll upload everyone's segments to a web server, and every group can try subscribing to the feed.
Listen. Finally we'll listen to all the morning's podcasts. (12:00)
Evaluate.
Let us know how the course worked for you. What did you like? What would you have lliked to learn? How could we do it better next time?
Workshop: Podcasting [Morning]
Keywords: podcasting, iPods in education, museumcasts, audio tours, metadata, RSS feed
