Podcasting Trail for Grade 11

Podcasting is fun and it's quite easy to get started.

Follow the trail and you will see what's required to set up a podcast sound studio in you own home.

The Grade 9's were here before you, so they nabbed the title. On this page you'll find links to all the bits and pieces you'll need to create a professional sounding podcast.

We'll start with the Podcasting Starter Kit blog.

Jake's done a terrific job here. It's an easy enough read with some screen captures for the more visually inclined of us.

You'll need to download this. It's basically your own little sound studio and booth.

Click on one of these mirror sites to start downloading Lame. It's a codec (coder/decoder) that will enable Audacity to spit out mp3's.

On this page Jake tells you to put the Lame codec into folder C:\Lame so it will be easy to find. I couldn't agree more.

When you open Audacity Preferences, click on the File Formats tab and then Find Library. Click Yes and you're away and laughing.

Down the bottom here you'll see some simple instructions on how to configure Audacity.

Once configured, plug the mike in and start recording.

Don't forget to hit pause instead of stop when you need to take a break while reading your scripts. Otherwise you'll have to start recording on a new track - don't worry if you forget, you can copy and paste it wherever needed.

Once back here you can go to the FreeSound Project and download then import any sound effects you need.

Remember, if the frequency of the sound effect is different than your voice recording frequency, put it into a separate track.

If you make a mistake click undo. When you've finished export your work as an MP3.

It would be a very good idea to save your work as a project even if you thyink you have finished with the MP3. By "Saving Project", you can always go back in and edit different tracks. It's almost impossible to change sound effects once they have been saved into a one track MP3.

The other sites are for hosting your drama- Scrapblog would be the best for creating a complementary mood.

Finally, please remember - do not use language, comments or pictures that will offend others.

If you are publishing to the internet or iTunes. Do not reveal personal information about yourselves or others.

Do not mention the name of the school or addresses/phone numbers/emails...

Those are pretty easy rules to remember - so get to work and have fun.