Pod-EFL

For some time now, podcasting seems to be the only thing I've been blogging about. Because of this, and because I ran out of server space (which meant I couldn't upload any podcasts), I decided to set up another hosting account that would give me enough space to podcast on a regular basis.



The site's now set up: http://www.pod-efl.com, and so I'll probably stop blogging here about podcasting, and use the other site, reserving this for non-podcasting stuff.


Now that I've got that sorted out, I hope to get back to what's been happening in the EFL/ESL blogosphere, as I feel a little out of touch...

Gigadial - your own personalised podcast station

After thinking that coming across a way of experimenting with Del.icio.us for personalising podcast and other audio content would be a great way of selecting audio content for students, or filtering podcasts for other EFL/ESL educators, Scott Lockman of Comprehensible Input put me onto Gigadial in his latest podcasts (CI-08 & CI-09)



Scott has a Gigadial station set up that others can contribute to, and I have to say that i'ts a really good idea, and a more formalised way of doing what the Del.icio.us trick does.


I've set up a channel too (pod-efl) ,to experiment with how it works, and I'm impressed.

And here is the rest of it.

Podcasting Dos & Don'ts

Podfeed has a feature on Podcasting Dos & Don'ts that is an interesting read...

pod-efl Podcast back online

Thanks to Nicole Simon of Sushi Radio, who kindly agreed to host the file, my first pod-efl podcast prepared for the June 19th Blogstreams Session is back online.







The chat ranscript that accompanies this podcast / session is here



Now I'm going to look into how best to host these files, and if I can make them smaller, to see if I can do any more. I'd love to continue what I started here, but for the moment, I think I'm going to concentrate on the audio files (which could be podcasts) I'm preparing for my classes in October and on the sushi radio podcasts I've been preparing with my current summer school students.



The first of these was uploaded last night, and the students were so pleased when they saw (and heard) it.



Here it is: 'An introduction to Spanish Traditonal Music'

It's the first time I've done a podcast with students and am very pleased with the results - there's something very motivating for the students when they have a genuine audience, and they all tried very hard to do their very best. I think they have good reason to be pleased with the result.

Use Del.icio.us to create customised podcast

Via A VC in NYC, here's an excellent idea that combines the social bookmarking software Del.icio.us with RSS to create a personalised podcast featuring a variety of different audio content.



I think it could have some really interesting potential uses for teachers and students.



How to do it:
1. You set up a new tag at Del.icio.us (I tried it with pod-efl).



2. You create a podcast-friendly RSS feed at Feedburner using the Del.icio.us URL of the new tag(http://feeds.feedburner.com/Delicious/blogefl/pod-efl).



3. You put the podcast feed into your podcast client (podcatcher): iPodder, or iTunes, for example.



4. The next time you come across a link to an mp3 audio file (podcast or otherwise) you think you may like, you post the link to Del.icio.us, and then when you run your podcatcher, it'll be automatically downloaded to your PC or mp3 player.



I've just tried it out, linking to the last Comprehensible Input podcast and it worked a treat.



Why this is interesting/useful :

I have just thought (off the top of my head) of these ways of making use of this feature (although I'm sure there are more):



a) You can publish a Del.icio.us feed of what you're listening to (could be used for recommending podcasts to other teachers / educators), thus filtering interesting podcast content for other educators.



b) You have a class of students (with access to the Web of course, and preferably mp3 players) and you want to give them extra listening practice. Just as using a blog can direct them to relevant and useful resources, so this system can supply them with relevant audio content.



c) You're interested in downloading mp3 files that aren't podcasts to listen to later (for example, from ELLO). This would be a tedious job, downloading each file one-by-one. This makes it much easier to do.



And...(please add your own ideas)

Podcast file size too big

I have had to delete the 'introduction to podcasting' file from the server because the file is too big. It is a real problem with podcast audio files, and one I must admit I haven't really thought too much about so far.



Now I have more time on my hands, I'll be looking into it to find a solution, and I'll probably revise the file and reduce its size too.



I'll revise the file and upload a smaller version of it ASAP