Edublogs Tutorials

orry to those who were waiting for the rest of this – it seems that the 3 slices I made the podcast into are now too big to upload. I have lost the original and need to resew and then recut into 4 new episodes.

It’s too much of a pain to ask you folks out there to do, so I’m looking for an alternative

It is probably easier to go to Wes Fryer’s site and listen to the podcast there or download it or simply subscribe via iTunes (not sure that episode is still available though)

My first choice for simplicity seems to be GCast – something I’ve kept in mind for a while now (also Ourmedia, but I hear it’s not too good at handling the media)

GCast also integrates instantly with iTunes – a feature that is much too difficult to set up with Edublogs embedded mp3 files. By the time I had registered and uploaded a demo, my podcast feed was already in iTunes – brilliant, just what I need – a programme that does it for me

GCast now embeds into your sidebar with no effort and they have no limit to uploads – Edublogs has 100Mb total and 10Mb for each podcast – a bit short for serious stuff, but ok for a quick book or field trip review

This should be Podcast 3b

For those of you who would like to submit your podcast  to iTunes manually, please try the following instructions.

For those who want the easy route, look at the GCast post

Well it would look like delayed intelligence has raised its head again.

Have you ever read instructions and they have made no sense at all? Yet when you work out how to do it, they somehow translate themselves into a new, friendly language.

Well that’s just what has been happening with this podcast thing.

Now I’m sure there’s no-one else out there who wonders what to do with a podcast when you’ve put it onto your edublog site – well I’ve been trying to sort this out for perhaps a year or so now. I know it’s simple and I should have asked, but everywhere I went – forums, blogs, podcasts, the universe, it seemed that this was a bit tricky.

I knew you could host a podcast on a blog

You can then submit it to iTunes

You can then let others see it on iTunes

Step 2 had me beat.

Until I read this Podcaster Tech Specs article on the …. – I know it sounds silly – but it’s on the iTunes website – yes I had looked all over this but didn’t find this info – or maybe I just didn’t SEE it!

So here are the instructions in my words – hopefully others will understand because it still took me some time to decode the iTunes instructions

1. Make a podcast (contact me if you are stuck here)
2. Upload it to your edublogs blog
3. Adding an mp3 player to a post -ideal for podcasting
4. You are now ready to move to iTunes
5. download iTunes 7 if you haven’t got it already
6. Go get your RSS feed for your blog
7. to do this, right click on the RSS logo on your site
8. click on Copy shortcut or copy link location – whichever one turns up
9. this will copy the “feed” for iTunes to work with note steps
10. James has been great and has sent me some further instructions
11. The main thing is that the feed address you get from your RSS button on your edublog is not right for podcasting.
12. So it needs some change to the end of the address
13. Just replace the end bit which says /feed/ with /wp-rss2.php
14. Now when you do stage 9, it works.
15. I thought I’d hit a brick wall but found out that there’s a delay in iTunes picking up the feed
16. ALSO, you need to make sure that there is an mp3 in the last 10 posts on your blog or your feed won’t pick this up
17. To alter the number of posts it will “see”, go to the admin dashboard
18. Go into Options>Reading
19. Change the RSS bit to a bigger number – I set mine to 50
20. The feed will now pick up the last 50 posts
21. In the Advanced menu, select Subscribe to Podcast.
22. Enter your feed URL (paste it in) in the text box and click OK.
23. Next to the new podcast subscription, you should see an orange circle, which indicates that iTunes is downloading your most recent episode
24. Double-click on the episode to play it in iTunes.
25. If you can successfully play the episode, then your feed is working and you can submit your podcast to iTunes.
26. However, if the orange circle is replaced by an “i” in a black circle, iTunes encountered a problem with your feed or episode.
27. You should troubleshoot your episode and feed before submitting it.
28. Please do not submit your feed until you can successfully subscribe using the Advanced menu.
29. If you can successfully subscribe to your feed using the Advanced menu in iTunes, you’re ready to submit your feed:
30. The next bit needs you to sign up for an iTunes account
31. You will need to add your credit card details to identify you
32. Launch iTunes.
33. In the left navigation column, under iTunes Store, click on the Podcasts link to go to the Podcasts page.
34. In the left column of the Podcasts page, in the For Podcaster’s box at the bottom, click on the Submit a Podcast
35. That’s as far as I have got as I need to read a bit more to try and find out about adding tags and pictures to my feed
36. This involved using www.feedburner.com to change the RSS feed code to include your picture and description of the podcast – so far, I’ve had no luck with this
37. Back to step 16

So not so much

More

We’re getting there

James also offered to write a full tutorial for this, so maybe it’ll all become clearer than my efforts

If you want to get involved with voice communication, here are some tips for adding this functionality to your blog. As you can see, these are now available in my right hand side bar.

To find how to out this functionality, take a look at Customising your side bar

and remember that you can add as many of these as you wish by increasing the number of text box widgets you require. When you start, this number will be set to 1 and you can increase it as you wish. To make these additional text boxes, you will find the drop-down just underneath the widgets part.

Adding a Skype availability button to your blog or website

Springdoo – talking e mails, no keyboard or typing skills needed, podcast

Send me an Odeo – add a voice message button to your blog or website

Have fun with the shout box, Odeo voicemail or have a go at Springdoo they are all great fun.

Many thanks to Carlos Raul Lopez Reatiga who independently sent me an Odeo message – see his message in the Shoutbox

Having failed to get divShare working with mp3s – like a number of others, I have disabled this plugin and reverted to the original file uploader.

So this is a trial to see if this works properly and embeds a player into the post

podcast-demo.mp3

Yes, there it is, so you podcasters need to make sure divShare is not being used, or you won’t be able to have a player

This is a test as a response to Alice Mercer’s comment on having an mp3 player in the post

The method is fairly simple, but doesn’t work – so my recommendation is to disable the divShare plugin if you want to do lots of podcasting

 Update: Alice says she has a workaround for this – so will post asap 

1. know the location of your mp3 file
2. go to divShare under you post when editing
3. click on browse
4. find the mp3 file
5. upload
6. you then have 2 option
7. to put in a link
8. to upload as an mp3 player
9. however in brackets it says ” turn off visual rich editor”
10. Be sure to turn off rich-text editing (or WYSIWYG, what you see is what you get).
11. Then, all is revealed
12. UnCheck under DASHBOARD | USERS | PROFILE at bottom of page is “Personal Options
13. afterwards go back and tick the “Use the visual rich editor” when writing your posts

I did all this but got no player

cerebraloddjobs has also had some problems
I know some people have had great luck with mp3 files. Maybe they can add a topic to the forum under “share your stuff” that explains what works and what doesn’t and what’s still frustrating. – anyone out there got the workaround for this?

This is fairly straightforward to do

1. record your podcast – another tutorial elsewhere
2. save it as an mp3 – see above
3. remember where it is
4. start a new post
5. fill in as normal
6. click in the post where you would like the player to be
7. follow the rest of the instructions at Adding a file (attachment ) to a post
8. click on “add to editor”
9. this will put an mp3 player on your page
10.  you can either click on the player and listen or
11. download to your hard drive via the link
12. Just so you get some idea of my pace, that has taken about 4 hours to work out – I must be very slow

podcast-demo.mp3