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This newsletter can be viewed on our website at http://www.peopleempowered.com.au/newsletters |
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Newsletter Vol. 3. No. 2 - May 2008 Podcasts |
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Are you one of those people who learns better aurally? Reading and books are not your scene, or you no longer have time to sit down and read? Do you enjoy radio but find that you are interested in only one part of a program but have to listen to the whole program to get the part you want? Are you aware that there is now a way that you can select what you want to listen to, that you can set up your own audio file and listen to what you want? This is what podcasts are about. Always wanting to keep at the forefront of what is happening in education, training and professional development, this newsletter introduces podcasts to People Empowered's program. We now have a podcast called People Empowered Nova. iTunes put our podcast on its list of top 16 "New and Notable" Business Podcasts in Australia on May 1 and it remained there until 19th May. Under the Resources menu on our website, we have added a new Podcasts page which features our first podcast - Prioritising What's Important in Life, followed by another one on Networking. More will follow on a regular basis. Go and check it out, or go to iTunes Business podcasts and find "People Empowered Nova". You have a choice about how and when you will listen to podcasts. You can listen on your computer. You can download the free iTunes software (or other music software) on to your computer and listen to the podcast later. You can also download it from there to your iPod or other MP3 player, or burn to a CD. Some of our readers will be very familiar with podcasts. Others of you may well be asking questions. Featured in this issue:
Please go and listen to our podcasts at http://www.peopleempowered.com.au/people-empowered-nova. We hope you feel inspired to give podcasting a try. 
Maree Harris |
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Podcasting, in brief, is an exciting, relatively new, technology for producing audio. It's rather like an audio newsletter or even like having your own radio station. What is different about podcasts as compared with listening to the radio is that you can choose which podcasts to listen to. If you find someone who produces podcasts that you enjoy, that are pertinent to your work or that inspire and motivate you, you can subscribe to those podcasts and every time a new one is produced you will be notified about it. You can then go and listen to it in any number of ways. Unlike a radio station you don't have to listen to what you're not interested in to get what you are - and there are no commercials! The other advantage of podcasts is that you control when you listen to them. You can listen at home at night, or catch up on your favourites over the week-end. You can download them on to your iPod or MP3 player and listen to them on the train or bus on the way to work, while out walking, cooking the tea or doing the gardening. Producing Podcasts. Anyone can produce a podcast. One of the major benefits of podcasting is its ease of production - once you have learnt how. It is the fact that there are now many free or low cost production tools around that has made podcasting so popular. Recording the Podcast. Here at People Empowered we have used a free audio software program called Audacity (link below) to record and edit our podcast. It has a very good support network around it and much helpful information. As well there is an Audacity Users Group where we can go for further assistance. We have used a combination headphones and microphones unit with which to record at present directly into the computer. Podcast Publisher. This allows us to set up and publish our podcast. We can upload our audio files to our blog or website or make them available as a podcast. The publisher we use is Hipcast (link below). It is not free but the Basic Plan we use only costs around US$5.40 a month and can be cancelled at any time. It also has a free trial. Audio Acrobat is another that is popular with colleagues, but more expensive, however, it does have more features. Subscribing to Podcasts. Feedburner (link below) is another free tool that we use that makes it easier for people to subscribe to our podcasts so that they can get the updates. There are a number of different ways and Feedburner offers all options. It also gives us statistics on our products, how many listened and which ones they listened to, for example. Anyone who is at all digitally and technologically literate will have no trouble producing podcasts. If this is all new to you - as it was to us here at People Empowered - it may be a different experience. It was a steep learning curve for us - at times an almost perpendicular climb! We encourage you not to be daunted by the prospect, but to try it and enjoy the climb. We found it frustrating, time-consuming but very exciting to produce our first podcast. In spite of doing workshops and watching videos and reading all the information we could, we still had gaps in our knowledge. Like in most things, the very experienced experts take so much for granted. They give three steps when those new to something (like us) need six steps. We learnt on the job, having to back-track many times. We had no difficulty, however, producing the second one. Podcasting - Creating Portable, Focused Learning Experiences in Organisations.
Podcasting can be a valuable resource for your organisation, professional service firm or business. It adds another string to your professional development, training, promotion and marketing bow - one that is new and exciting and interfaces with the technological "mindset" that increasingly characterises the people in our organisations. Podcasts can be a very effective way to build profile for your organisation. They are also a way to give life and energy to your branding. They bring voice to your brand and with voice comes personality, energy and engagement. Given that podcasts involve individuals giving voice to what is important to them and their organisations, they also create closer links between personal and business branding. This is not easy to get with the written word. Podcasting is a way to provide portable, focused learning experiences for your people. Not all training and professional development needs to be face to face. Some could valuably be done with podcasting - short, potent learning episodes, one idea at a time which your people can listen to and absorb in their own time. More importantly, they can keep the podcast, download it to their iPods or MP3 players and listen to it more than once. It can also be used by CEOs, managers and team leaders to send motivational and inspirational messages to their people on a weekly or regular basis. Collections of your organisational podcasts can become part of your orientation program for new staff. You could create a number of short podcasts on your organisation - some practical information, some motivational and inspirational - and download them on to iPods and give them to your new staff. This may be far more appealing - especially to Generation X and Y - than sitting through long information packed orientation sessions. Podcasts can also be used in organisations to report on new initiatives and projects or to keep staff updated on existing ones. If you have an event coming up - training, social occasion, corporate social responsibility program, for example - you can do a podcast to let people know about it. One way of doing this is to interview one of the organisers to encourage interest and call for volunteers or participants. In fact, podcasts add a new and exciting dimension to organisational websites and intranets. An interesting variety of podcasts can be created which staff can either listen to from their computers or download on to their MP3 players and listen to as they travel to and from work, for example. Instead of a weekly newsletter, an organisation can have a number of podcasts that staff can download every Monday morning and absorb during the week at their leisure. As I've noted previously, one of the major benefits of podcasting is its portabilily. You can listen to it anywhere and at anytime. This is why podcasting is becoming so popular, whether it's a podcast of the annual meeting of a large corporation, a radio program, or a business podcast. You don't have to stop what you are doing and listen to it live. You can download it at your leisure and listen at your leisure. A good place to begin, if this is all new to you, is to go and listen to other people's podcasts and get a sense of what is happening in this exciting field.
We found the following resources most useful in learning how to produce a podcast.
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