Podcasting - quick wins for quality
I've been really getting into podcasting and also into adding audio to slidehare and voicethread shows. The latter are two excellent online presentation tools that allow the user to quickly narrate and publish PowerPoints and create stories based around pictures. For those unaware, Podcasting is where you record audio and publish it to the web so anyone can hear it. Listeners can choose to download or subscribe to the podcast and be alerted when a new ' show' has been uploaded. There are many others that can explain how its done far better than me. I thought I'd share my recent experiences trying to record good quality sound.
I use the brilliant Olympus Voice Recorder, which is quick, easy and offers good quality for ad-hoc use. I recorded Ian Hobson's speech at the Becta regional conference using it. It has one minor flaw; it regulates volume automatically, thus when its quiet it increases the gain, causing an increase in background noise until the speaker starts again when it booms until it adjusts. This can be irritating.
Children from the
Downs FM presented at our
2007 ICT Conference and they really showed us how its done. Downs use a USB condensor microphone that I'd not come across before. This is broadcast quality! Well I now have one, and the difference in quality is remarkable, and the price to Kent schools is incredible value for money. The
Podcast Pack is available from
Music Education Consultants, a
Kent Commercial Services catalogue supplier, and I would strongly recommend it if you are considering recording voice audio.
Quiet surroundings are important! In a school this is difficult to achieve in practice, and even more difficult in my noisy home. If anyone has a practical solution to finding a comfortable space in a school where there are no interruptions and good sound proofing, let me know. The shock-stopping cradle that comes with the Podcasting kit works very well, and gets rid of those table bumps and bangs, and reduces background noise picked up from hard surfaces when using ordinary mounts.
