Here it is! My beautiful course podcast. The University of Minnesota's iTunes U site made it easy for even a Luddite like me to upload a selection of podcast episodes from those I already had downloaded to my own iTunes account.
I won't explain the technical piece too much because 1.it will vary depending on your university and context and 2. from my own experience, I will spend a week seeking out someone who can show me how to do the technical part rather than an hour or two reading about it myself. Feel free to post questions and I will do my best to help!
(This is where the "creating a course podcast is easy!" part of my blogging mission breaks down: without Alison Link, M.A. student and Instructional Technology Fellow in PsTL, I would be hauling cassette tapes and boomboxes around campus or trying to find earbuds with extenders for 44 listeners. If you are not technologically savvy yourself, you MUST find an ally, jedi, or assistant of some kind. If you can't find someone in your department willing and able to help, try recruiting a techie T.A.)
The one piece of technical know-how I will pass on is this: by right-clicking on a file listed in iTunes, you can "get info" which in the "summary" tab will provide you with the pathway to find the file when it comes time to upload it to a new course podcast, or other holding-pen for your files.
This might be a good time to mention that the advantage of creating a podcast is that students can download files to their listening devices and then carry them around and listen to literature any time, in any place. Pasting them on the course website means that students have to be sitting in front of a computer connected to the internet.
I hope to share my love of literature and convince students that it can merge seamlessly into their everyday practices: riding the bus, listening to music...why not add a poem a day app, or an audiobook?
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