Recording Your Podcast...

First, record your podcast with one of the library's digital audio recorders. You can check them out from Ms. Koval or Miss Helen. 

Please be careful with these, though, because if "you break 'em, you buy 'em!" 

If you can't figure out which buttons to press when, please review the user manual. 

Recording Your Podcast with Gcast...

Another way to record your podcast is with Gcast. Gcast is a website that allows you to record voice messages, mix in music, upload, and share audio files right from your cell phone! For free! For real!

The sound quality isn't pristine, but it's definitely passable. If you want to try Gcasting, this page will tell you all you need to know. And if you want to hear an example, take a listen to my first Gcasts with Ms. Gardner's class.
  

 
Editing Your Podcast with Audacity...

If you need to do any trimming of your recording, you can use a program called Audacity. The download is safe and best of all free.

If you want to be able to convert files to MP3s, you'll need to also download and install their encoder.  

Unfortunately, I don't think you can use Audacity to edit Gcasts, and to be honest, I don't know if you can edit Gcasts at all without deleting and re-recording them, but I'm not sure about that. If you figured this out already, please add a comment to this blog post and let us know how.

Uploading Your Podcast to a Weebly Blog...

Click new post to create a new post. In the dashboard above, click and drag elements you want to add to your blog post: like paragraphs under basic and photos under multimedia. 

To upload your audio file, under multimedia, click and drag the file icon, then upload your WMA or MP3 file from your computer, recorder, drive, or device. (See for example the podcast below by Ms. Gardner.)  

To edit or delete your post, click edit under the comments link in the post. But if you're sharing a blog with classmates or colleagues, please don't edit or delete someone else's post because that's not nice.
 

ms_gardner_gets_all_giddy_about_podcasting.wma
File Size:	209 kb
File Type:	wma

Download File

---

Uploading Your Podcast to Blogger...

Because Blogger doesn't yet allow you to upload audio files (like MP3s or WMAs) by themselves with out embedding a player, you're going to need a work around to upload your podcasts to Blogger. 

You can use Windows Movie Maker to make a video file of your audiocast, which you can easily upload to Blogger, no questions asked. This helpful blogpost will tell you how-to. 
 
For tips on how to edit Blogger blog posts, check out this screencast I made with a Casa student named Ryan. We walk and talk you through all the steps.
 
Well, that's about it! Got questions? Email me or IM me. Good luck and happy blog-casting! =)
 

a sweet student named preet asked a very good question on our guestbook page. "how do we request books from other high schools?" preet, your ? reminds me that i need to put a f.a.q. page on our site for times just such as these! so thanks for that. but for now, here's how you do it!

1. click the catalog tab at the top of this page

2. then click where is says "click here to search our online catalog"

3. then click the catalog tab at the top of that page

(all these extra steps are annoying, i know, and i'm working on ways to skip them but, for now, you just have to keep clicking, sorry!)

4. where it says "look in" select "petaluma city school district"

5. type in the search box the title of the book you want and see where it's at -- to do this look to the right of the screen. it will say "no local copies" and below that  something like "1 of 1 available off-site" click that! it's a link! =)  you really don't have to do this, but this will tell you for sure that it is indeed somewhere else in petaluma. if there are no off-site copies, it means none of our schools has that title and you should email us or tell us this title so we can put it on our list of books to buy.

6. last step! =) come back to bighouselibrary.com and click the contact tab at the top of the page and email us the title of the book you want. or just go up to the circ desk in the library and tell miss helen or me! =)

p.s. you can only request to borrow  books from other petaluma city schools, i.e. petaluma high school, petaluma junior high school, and kenilworth junior high school.

so, that's how inter-library loan works @ casa, preet! thanks for asking & thanks for reading! =)