Speakers@Wooster is the College of Wooster’s effort to capture and share (when given permission by the speaker) public addresses given at the College. It is certainly not limted to just public speakers and we hope to have guest lectures from different courses. The hope is for people around the world to find pedagogical uses for the material that is posted.
At this time the Podcast actually has three faces. There is the face you are looking at on this site which is a weblog created with WordPress MU and containing the audio file and an associated RSS feed, which acts as the Podcast. The second face is a dedicated RSS feed at http://www.wooster.edu/technology/it/podcasts/speakers.xml, which is maintained through the use of RSS creation software. The third form is as a regular webpage with links to the audio files. The last is not technically a Podcast as there is no possibility of aggregating the content.
The audio is being captured with the use of a lapel mic and firestores. The raw audio is then converted to MP3 in either iTunes or Audacity. The MP3s are then uploaded to a Web server maintined by the Instructional Technology department. After all of these steps are done the press release for the event is used as the RSS description (when a press release is available) and the blog entry and standalone RSS entries are created. At that point the event is a part of the Podcast.
If you would like to know more about creating entries for the Podcast or adding speakers to the Podcast, please contact Jon Breitenbucher at jbreitenbuch@wooster.edu.