Adding Sound to Your Online Course with Audacity
Rodger Hergert ION Faculty Summer Institute May 17, 2005
Getting Started with Audacity 1. Download Audacity at http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ 2. Install Audacity by clicking “Next” a lot. 3. Download the LAME encoder (converts files to mp3) at http://mitiok.free.fr/ (LAME encoder for Windows) http://spaghetticode.org/lame/ (LAME encoder for Mac) 4. Put the file lame_enc.dll in an easy to find location (you’ll be asked to find this file the first time you convert a file to MP3).
Recording in Audacity 1. Plug in your microphone. 2. Open the program. 3. Press “record” to start and “stop” to end.
4. Save the file (it will be in .aup format) with a meaningful name.
Convert to MP3 1. To adjust the quality and file size, go to File>Preferences>File Format and change the bit rate setting at the bottom of the window. 56 seems to be a good setting for decent quality and reasonable file size. A larger bit rate means better quality & larger file size. 2. Select File>Export as MP3… 3. Give the file a meaningful name and easy to find location and click Save. 4. Fill in the title, artist, etc. and click OK.
Deliver using pseudo-streaming 1. Open a basic text editor (Notepad or TextEdit). 2. Type the URL for the mp3 file. 3. Save as “filename.m3u” (not as .txt)
4. Upload to your web server and link to this file (rather than the .mp3 file directly) 5. For more info on pseudo-streaming, go to http://www.deliveryourmedia.com/article-audio-primer-5.html
Other resources for audio in education 1. The Promise of Podcasting - http://www.ion.illinois.edu/resources/pointersclickers/2005_03/index.asp 2. NCQTalk.com - http://www.ncqtalk.com (especially Episodes 1 & 6) 3. Michael Coghlan - http://users.chariot.net.au/~michaelc/ http://www.learningtimes.org (free membership required) http://www.elearn.wa.edu.au/kt/edition05/html/npra_michael_coghlan.html
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