This page is dedicated to any comments, concerns, and information that anyone would like to write about the Middle School Technology Planning. It can be questions and answers or just to post a comment. Please feel free to edit this page. (Joe O.) -
Comments from Wednesday's meeting:
Howdy all,
I don't know about the rest of you, but that meeting yesterday was just a couple of commercials to me. I kept hearing iTunes, iTunes, and more iTunes. Guess what? You DON'T need iTunes to get 95% of those podcasts Mary was talking about. The newer hard drive images have Internet Explorer 7, and you can subscribe to RSS feeds with IE7. Such as the Grammar Girl podcast Mary showed http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/. You subscribe to it with IE7 and you can play the podcasts directly from your browser in Windows Media Player, or you can download the actual audio file and do what you want with it. At some point Microsoft will wake up and build podcast/RSS support into Windows Media Player. Until then there are many other ways to get these podcasts without iTunes. There are several open source (FREE) options. I prefer "Juice" which used to be called ipodder until Apple flexed it legal muscle and made them change the name because it has ipod in it. They are just like Microsoft and don't like competition with their products. Juice is a decent RSS aggregator. There are tons of podcast directories out there other than iTunes, google it and you will see. Most podcasts will have an iTunes RSS feed, and an other than iTunes RSS feed that you can subscribe to. Jeannes podcasts however are iTunes only feeds which keeps anyone not running iTunes or alternative OS's like linux from accessing them.
As for actually creating podcasts on the PC side, you could go with the Adobe option which has costs associated with it. The other options are open source or free stuff. Are they as easy to use as the Apple products? No, not really but they can be learned fairly quickly. Lets clear something up that some may not understand. Apple software exists to sell Apple hardware, if they were truly concerned about content creation there would be a Windows version of GarageBand or the whole iLife product. The products listed below can be used to create a podcast on a PC for no cost.
Audacity http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
EasyPodcast http://www.easypodcast.com/
Juice http://juicereceiver.sourceforge.net/
WMEncoder http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=5691ba02-e496-465a-bba9-b2f1182cdf24&displaylang=en
Using the WMEncoder you can even make enhanced podcasts on the pc to embed pictures and urls into your podcast. Its not as easy as GarageBand but its free, and you don't have to buy Apple hardware.
If you have questions feel free to call. I didn't know all the names of everyone so if I missed somebody, please pass this on for consideration in your planning.
Doug
Assistant Network Manager
