If you plan to produce a series of podcasts it is possible to create an Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feed that will allow users to subscribe to your podcast. Subscribers may then automatically download new editions of your podcast using an aggregator program such as I-Tunes.
RSS Feeds within Blackboard
It’s easy to set up an RSS feed within your Blackboard course. Simply select the relevant option when adding a Podcast section to your course menu.
RSS Feeds not involving Blackboard
RSS feeds can be created using free software which may be found using Google search, or can be created manually using a text editor such as notepad.
Example RSS Feed
If you wish to create your own RSS feed using a text editor such as Notepad, copy the example below and edit accordingly.
The example below is the RSS feed used for the Blackboard Briefing Podcast. Simply copy the text into notepad and adjust the text between the tags as applicable. Tags are enclosed with greater than and less than symbols in a similar way to html. Note that this example shows four podcasts, make sure to keep the more recent podcast as the first <item>.
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<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?> <rss xmlns:itunes=”http://www.itunes.com/dtds/podcast-1.0.dtd” version=”2.0″> <channel> <ttl>60</ttl> <title>Blackboard Briefing</title> <link>http://www.iss.soton.ac.uk/landt/elearn/podcast</link> <language>en-uk</language> <copyright>ISS</copyright> <itunes:subtitle>Blackboard Briefing – a podcast about the August 2006 Blackboard Upgrade at the University of Southampton.</itunes:subtitle> <itunes:author>Matt Deeprose and Sam Cole</itunes:author> <itunes:summary>Over the course of four weeks a weekly podcast will be released with news, interviews and features about Blackboard and the upgrade to Blackboard 7.1</itunes:summary> <description>Blackboard Briefing</description> <itunes:owner> <itunes:name>iSolutions Blackboard Team</itunes:name> <itunes:email>weblearn@soton.ac.uk</itunes:email> </itunes:owner> <itunes:image href=”http://www.iss.soton.ac.uk/landt/elearn/upgrade3.JPG” /> <itunes:category text=”Technology”> </itunes:category> <item> <title>Blackboard Briefing #4</title> <itunes:author>Matt Deeprose and Sam Cole</itunes:author> <itunes:subtitle>Blackboard Briefing #4 – 29 August 2006</itunes:subtitle> <itunes:summary>This weeks podcast features: 1) News about the upgrade, 2) Interview with Fiona Grindey (Student Services), 3) Interview with Gary Farrell (ISVR)</itunes:summary> <enclosure url=”http://www.iss.soton.ac.uk/landt/elearn/iss-blackboard-briefing-20060829.mp3” length=”10222377″ type=”audio/mpeg” /> <guid>http://www.iss.soton.ac.uk/landt/elearn/podcast#4</guid> <pubDate>Tue, 29 Aug 2006 06:00:00 GMT</pubDate> <itunes:duration>14:11</itunes:duration> <itunes:keywords>Blackboard</itunes:keywords> </item> <item> <title>Blackboard Briefing #3</title> <itunes:author>Matt Deeprose and Sam Cole</itunes:author> <itunes:subtitle>Blackboard Briefing #3 – 21 August 2006</itunes:subtitle> <itunes:summary>This weeks podcast features: 1) News about the upgrade, 2)Feedback from the previous podcast,3) Interview with Sally Bennett (ISS), 4) Interview with Debbie Goodwin (Psychology), 5) Discussion of new assessment features in Blackboard 7.1</itunes:summary> <enclosure url=”http://www.iss.soton.ac.uk/landt/elearn/iss-blackboard-briefing-20060821.mp3” length=”17173524″ type=”audio/mpeg” /> <guid>http://www.iss.soton.ac.uk/landt/elearn/podcast#3</guid> <pubDate>Mon, 21 Aug 2006 06:00:00 GMT</pubDate> <itunes:duration>24:02</itunes:duration> <itunes:keywords>Blackboard</itunes:keywords> </item> <item> <title>Blackboard Briefing #2</title> <itunes:author>Matt Deeprose and Sam Cole</itunes:author> <itunes:subtitle>Blackboard Briefing #2 – 14 August 2006</itunes:subtitle> <itunes:summary>This weeks podcast features: 1) News about the upgrade. 2)Interview with Richard Webber (ISS). 3) Interview with Keith Jones (Education). 4) Discussion of Internationalisation, a new feature in Blackboard 7.1.</itunes:summary> <enclosure url=”http://www.iss.soton.ac.uk/landt/elearn/iss-blackboard-briefing-20060814.mp3” length=”12993536″ type=”audio/mpeg” /> <guid>http://www.iss.soton.ac.uk/landt/elearn/podcast#2</guid> <pubDate>Mon, 14 Aug 2006 06:00:00 GMT</pubDate> <itunes:duration>18:06</itunes:duration> <itunes:keywords>Blackboard</itunes:keywords> </item> <item> <title>Blackboard Briefing #1</title> <itunes:author>Matt Deeprose and Sam Cole</itunes:author> <itunes:subtitle>Blackboard Briefing #1 – 7 August 2006</itunes:subtitle> <itunes:summary>This weeks podcast features: 1) News about the upgrade. 2)Interview with Bob Price (ISS). 3) Interview with Richard Humphrey (Education). 4) Discussion of Adaptive Release, a new feature in Blackboard 7.1.</itunes:summary> <enclosure url=”http://www.iss.soton.ac.uk/landt/elearn/iss-blackboard-briefing-20060807.mp3” length=”13588252″ type=”audio/mpeg” /> <guid>http://www.iss.soton.ac.uk/landt/elearn/podcast#previous</guid> <pubDate>Mon, 07 Aug 2006 11:00:00 GMT</pubDate> <itunes:duration>19:03</itunes:duration> <itunes:keywords>Blackboard</itunes:keywords> </item> <itunes:explicit>No</itunes:explicit> </channel> </rss> |
You should save the file with a .xml extention.
In order to use your RSS feed you will need to place both the xml file and MP3 into your own web space. Listeners may subscribe by using a link to the xml file on your web space.
Checking Your Feed
Check you feed file with a podcast aggregator program such as I-Tunes to make sure that the podcasts download correctly.
If you find that it does not work as you expect it to, use a feed validation web site such as http://www.feedvalidator.org/ to check your feed for errors.
HTML Header
If you have a web page about your podcast, you can place a reference to the xml file in the <head> section, for example:
| <link rel=”alternate” href=”filename.xml” type=”application/rss+xml” title=”iSolutions Blackboard Briefing” /> |