MFLE Guide to Podcasting Part 1 – What is a Podcast? Welcome to the MFLE guide to podcasting for modern languages teachers. This is the first in a short series of films aimed at introducing MFL teachers to the delights of podcasting and highlighting its potential uses in a languages classroom. SLIDE This first film explains exactly what these things called podcasts are. Part 2 looks at reasons why you and your students should give podcasting a shot. Part 3 gives you some ideas about the kinds of podcast you could produce and shows you some examples of these ideas created mostly by myself or my pupils. Part 4 takes you into the nitty gritty of the mysterious art of podcasting. In other words this is where you can learn the basics of recording and posting audio to the web. Part 5 shows you variety of ways in which you can record audio either on the go or when you don\'t have access to a computer and still turn it into a podcast. So without further ado lets get started and define a podcast. The New American Dictionary defines a podcast as "a digital recording of a radio broadcast or similar program, made available on the Internet for downloading to a personal audio player." These days this definition has expanded to include video as well as audio; video podcasts often being referred to as vodcasts. The word podcast is derived from the word BROADCAST and iPOD and reflects the idea that a podcast is a form of broadcast which can be carried around. There are 2 major differences between podcasts and standard broadcasts. Podcasting requires very little equipment to get your voice out there. No satellites, studios or relay stations required. For standard broadcasting the viewer or listener has to wait for their programme to be aired. With a podcast the audience can listen in whenever, wherever and however they want. This is what makes a podcast so handy. The audience has total control over how to access it. This is achieved by a system called RSS (Really Simple Syndication). Without going into the technical details, which I for one don\'t really understand, once a podcast is created a feed is generated which means that upon finding your podcast your audience can subscribe to it. This in turn means that rather like having your paper delivered every morning, new episodes of your podcast can be delivered once they are posted. No more having to search for it every time you want to listen. Podcasts are in the main audio files and as such are created as mp3 files, which means that anyone with an mp3 player can download and listen to podcasts on the go, whenever they want. Useful eh? And what an great way for your students to get their fix of target language out of the classroom. Hopefully this clears up what a podcast is and that you are now enthused to have a look at the next film in this series. Before you do so though you might like to have a look at the fantastic film by Lee LeFever at Commoncraft called PODCASTING IN PLAIN ENGLISH which describes podcasting in a more visual format. Happy podcasting