Welcome
You have found the Montgomery College Faculty Podcasters' User Guide. This guide is designed to provide MC Faculty with enough information to decide if podcasting is right for you! The guide is actually composed of a series of parts focusing on pedagogy, process, and policies. The pedagogy is the heart of the guide, and that is where we talk about the impact of podcasting on teaching and learning. Most of us will agree that without a strong positive impact on learning, podcasting isn't worth the effort of incorporating it into our classroom activities. The process of podcasting is also explored, including how to make and edit podcasts, where to post them, and how to let your students know where they can get them. The policies are also mentioned, but since the College is still developing guidelines regarding the legal issues about podcasting, this area is a bit limited.
With these three core values of pedagogy, process, and policies serving as the structure of this site, the format includes the web site itself, a guide book (available in PDF format), a number of videos, and links to resources across the Internet. The web site serves as a primary organizing tool for the resources, and will contain mostly connections to information rather than a rich site of information itself. The guidebook is a printable file that will provide you with hard copy instructions for the various pieces of software included in the guide, as well as an overview of podcasting. The videos are of three basic types, interviews with College experts, introductions to broad concepts, and software tutorials. The College experts include faculty who are using podcasts in their classes as well as staff who can help with developing and posting podcasts. Overview videos include an introduction to this entire guide as well as an introduction to podcasting in general terms. The software tutorials are for some of the more popular software titles, all of which are free or very inexpensive. There is also a rich set of links to other sites across the Internet for more information or inspiration if you are wondering how you can use podcasts in your class.
Since this is a guide to podcasting, you will find the interviews, overviews, and tutorials available for viewing on-screen as well as available as podcasts. In addition to some other podcasts available on the net, the "subscription" page has links to each type category of video as well as the expert interviews in video or audio only mode, and a final link to all of the media files created for this guide. These links will allow you to subscribe to the podcasts and download them to your computer and even your iPod if you wish.
I hope you find these pages full of interesting and informative material that will help you decide if podcasting is right for you. If you have any questions I suggest you seek out the CTL experts at 240-567-5157 or feel free to give me a call at 240-567-6947.
John Coliton
Spring 2008