Outreach through Podcasting.

Podcasts provide the opportunity for digital, highly personalized information exchange to a mobile society now expecting outreach by means other than traditional written materials.  A podcast feed is an RSS 2.0 (Really Simple Syndication) XML file with enclosure tags that link to audio or video files.   The MP3 audio format is the most common type of file.  RSS aggregators such as Apple’s iTunes can read the RSS feeds and facilitate automatic download, organization, and synchronization of the podcasts to iPods and similar portable MP3 audio devices.   Turf and Garden Tips is a pilot blog and podcast effort launched from a cooperative effort between information technology staff for Virginia Tech’s College of Agricultural and Life Sciences and Extension specialists in turf and horticulture. The goal was to establish a production workflow that enabled quality digital recording and an easy method to publish content to both a blog and a podcast.     Audacity, a free, open source audio editing application and a USB microphone are all the equipment needed for a faculty member to begin recording podcast episodes on their desktop PC.   Audio files are compressed using the MP3 file format to reduce file size.   A web application created by the IT specialists enables specialists to routinely add new episodes to the podcast RSS feed and to the blog.   Placing the content on both the blog and podcast gave the audience a choice of how they could access the content and also provides for the addition of transcripts, links to pertinent extension publications, and special attachments related to the topic.    A link to a user survey is included on the blog to gather the opinions of web visitors and Google Analytics gathers web traffic statistics for the blog for reporting.