Embedding Audio in Your CMS or Website

Most faculty don’t really consider how their podcasts are received by students. I’m not talking about whether students like the podcast or not. I’m talking about the process a student goes through to listen to the podcast. Does she have to subscribe to the podcast to listen to them? Does she have to download a file and open it in a media player? There are many different scenarios for listening to a podcast. My philosophy is make it as easy as possible, especially if it’s students you want to listen.

iTunes U and RSS feeds from a blog are great for podcasting, but I’m finding it difficult to explain to students the power of RSS and subscribing to content so it shows up automatically in their media player. They are all over the place in terms of what media player they use, if they use it on a regular basis, or whether or not they even have speakers or headphones for their computers. To solve the problem, I just require a cheap pair of headphones and embed the audio podcast in the places I know they will visit daily: Course blog and Blackboard, the course management system.

A while back I used to use Odeo Sudio for my podcasting needs. I could upload my audio files and embed their nice flash players into the places that students would visit. Something happened along the way, and Odeo is not as reliable any longer, so I needed a substitute. Luckily a great article on Digital Inspiration appeared to save the day.

Amit posted a great article: “How to Embed MP3 Audio Files In Web Pages With Google or Yahoo! Flash Player” that had some great ideas about embedding audio that I never considered. If you just put a link to the audio on your webpage, a whole new window opens up and you will need Quicktime to listen to the file. With Amit’s tip, I can embed the player right in the page and the student never leaves the page. He can look around and read other content as he listens.

This is a great solution and the embedded players look great on my course blog and in Blackboard. My favorite is the Google player because there are no ads or branding. Read the article and give it try.