Editing our Podcasts

There are three types of podcasts:

• Regular - audio only
• Enhanced - audio with slides or pictures
• Video - video and slides

Our podcasts are enhanced podcasts. We divided the podcasts into chapters so that people will be able to find certain clips easily and added graphics to illustrate the chapters. We also added pictures to enhance the information about the projects, people and ideas being discussed. This part of the process was not too difficult but finding, choosing and formatting the pictures was very time consuming. We saved pictures in iPhoto and used those pictures to illustrate our podcasts. We made slides of the logo, the website address and some other illustrations in Power Point, saved the slides as JPEG files and imported them into iPhoto.

We used a music clip from an audio file in iTunes. We used the intro to a piece called Sahara by Toumani Diabate and Taj Mahal from the album Kulanjan released in 1999 by Rykodisc Records.

We cut out unwanted bits of the interviews, mostly places where people had decided to repeat their comments and state their ideas more clearly. We found it easier just to keep the tape rolling and cut out the 'bloopers' later. This is very easy if the speakers leave some space between the original attempt and the correction. In the case of the Toronto recordings (Talking to Nadine & Susan and Talking to Fran & Judi), we were in the room and knew what to cut. In the case of the Hazeltonrecording (Talking to Anne & Dee), the participants noted what they wanted cut right in the recording by pausing, saying, "Please cut that - we are starting again here," and pausing again before continuing. This worked very well.

The most difficult part of editing was trying to enhance the audio quality. We are not sound technicians and played with settings until it sounded as good as we could make it. The best thing to do is to try and get a good quality recording as we did with Talking to Nadine & Susan.

In the case of Talking to Fran & Judi, we wanted to experiment with an ad hoc situation to see if we could use podcasting as a way of involving more people in conference conversations - we could record workshops or gather informally post-workshop for discussions and broadcast the conversation. We still feel that this would be a useful application for podcasts in literacy. People could report on experiences and learning without writing and people could hear about those experiences by listening when they have time - while in the bath, exercising, cooking ... We wonder if this might make information more accessible to literacy workers who tell us that finding time to read and write about their work is a challenge.

In the case of Talking to Anne & Dee, we wanted to experiment with a low-tech situation to test the accessibility limits of this technology. We found out that people can create the audio file quite simply and, with the help of an audio technician, the material can be converted to a digital format. There is more post-production work to be done but the Anne & Dee recording was actually of better quality than Talking to Fran & Judi.