Planning a "Solo" Podcast

Just when I thought I had a handle on the technology -- on Nings, on Blogs, on Wikis, on VoiceThread and digital storytelling, etc. -- along came the Podcast ... and BOOM ... I'm paralyzed with fear ... again!

I've spent the last week, and more, pouring through the Hendron and the Podcasting for Dummies books -- I've read the whole PFD (not .pdf) book now -- and I'm still tentative about actually sitting down and doing the podcast. My next task is to review the tutorials on the wiki, again, and the plan is to sit down on Tuesday, November 4, 2008, and record, and edit, and complete the ID3 info, and complete the show notes, and complete the FTP of the mp3 media file to the U of MN Media Mill, and finally generate the RSS 2.0 feed.

See, I have the process down now. It's just the bells-and-whistles of all the software to worry about. But it's not like I've done nothing. I experimented in class last week with the Mac's GarageBand. I definitely like GarageBand, but since my college only supports PCs and Windows, I'm focusing more on the software applications related to PCs, particularly Audacity.

And, I've already recorded two files on Audacity: a personal introduction for my classes, and a short story I wrote a few years ago -- which would actually work well as a 2-3 person "radio play," or whatever it might be called, if I scripted it that way.

Audacity does not have all the bells-and-whistles that GarageBand does, which might lead one to think it's easier, but it then requires other downloads for music and sound effects and whatnot. Maybe that's what's tripping me up?

But my preparation or planning for my "solo" podcast is done. It will be a monologue about the reasons why I do not currently spend very much time on Native American literature (or orature?) -- especially on the creation tales, the trickster tales, the ghost dances, the songs, and so forth -- in the American literature survey courses. It's a question I ask myself every semester, it's a question I wrestle with frequently, and it's a question sometimes (OK, rarely) asked by my students. So it will be a "talking through" of the rationale I use ... and perhaps the rationale I've heard from others.

So stay tuned! I hope to have a post on Tuesday, November 4, 2008, with at least two things: a link to the podcast itself, and, hopefully, an RSS feed to "subscribe" to the post ... and perhaps to future posts.