A podcast can be thought of as a radio show that is distributed on the Web, just for subscribers. This means that when we, as authors, create a new episode, our subscribers automatically receive it on their computer or an iPod (the Apple device that gave the name to this distribution mechanism) connected to the computer via a kind of synchronization process. Thus, a podcast is not the usual concept of radio where a station is continually broadcasting. In addition, podcasts can be audio- or video-based (for example, http://itunes.stanford.edu). We also need a player to automatically download podcasts, for example Podfy (http://www.podfy.com).

And with PodOmatic, we are going to create podcasts, and we don't even need a player.

PodOmatic (http://www.podomatic.com) is an online community that loves podcasting. We can create our own podcasts online without the need to install any extra software. As an example of a podcast, we can create an audio magazine of what's going on in the course. We can talk about some of the activities that are being done, some things that we learned, and of course, some songs that we've been listening to.

After creating a new account, in the homepage we need to click on the New episode button.

We can then fill in the name of the episode and the description, and click on the Save & Continue button. A new dialog will appear, this time for adding the content of our podcast's episode. We can upload files from our computer or even record directly by using our webcam or microphone. Let's see as an example how to upload files. First, we should click on the Upload a file link.

Next, we should click on the Select some files button and then select the required files from your computer:

We then have to select a photo for the episode (600 px x 600 px size recommended), add some tags, and click on the Save & Continue button when done.

In the following example, I added a Tears of Steel movie picture:

To add this podcast to Moodle, we need to click on the Embed tab in the episode's page as shown in the following screenshot:

Finally, we need to copy the embed code and paste it in Moodle. We can also add a link to the podcast on the course so that others can subscribe to it.