To get students set up on a blog, these are the sites I would suggest:
http://www.wordpress.com
http://typepad.com
http://eblogger.com
http://blogger.com
http://www.squarespace.com
http://www.thoughts.com
http://livejournal.com
http://blogcrowds.com
http://www.vox.com/
These are just a few. There are many, many more.
Podcast Instructions:
A podcast is an audio file sent to the web. You probably already know this. Here are some sites where students can get podcasts going:
http://www.wordpress.com - students may need to pay extra to upload really large files, such as documentaries
****The same goes for all of the ones above
There are other sites that will allow you to upload large files for free:
www.podbean.com
www.podomatic.com
This one may be for a fee:
www.podcast.com
www.podango.com
There are podcasts for just about every major mainstream radio station from the BBC, NPR, CBC, RCI, FAN590, CHFI, etc…
Video Blogs or Video Podcasts:
Video blogs are when students would do a commentary piece, a talk show that is more casual – anything appropriate for student work and/or the nature of the web. Every site I have listed at the top will give a student the ability to upload video onto their blog. As I have mentioned before, there may be an added fee to support the high megabyte size of these files.
Video Podcasts – these are more professional pieces of work put to the web. Either check out or show these two websites are doing Internet TV, and essentially on-going video podcasts:
www.dex.tv
www.therealnews.com/t/
If you would like to see a multimedia online magazine that I have created through Wordpress.com, check out http://kakonged.wordpress.com. There you will find blogging stories, pictures, podcasts, video blogs and video podcasts. I highly recommend you start one yourself if you can find the time so you can show it to your students. It is tremendous fun and I know you would really enjoy it.
More on multimedia magazines...to create an online .pdf copy of a magazine here are some sites:
http://www.joomla.org/
http://drupal.org/
www.xanga.com
http://www.uniflip.com/
Design Information:
If you want a really unique design for your site…here are some sources where if you have some money…you can get it done:
http://www.doodlebuddesign.blogspot.com/
http://wp-design.org/
http://www.wpdesigner.com/2007/02/19/so-you-want-to-create-wordpress-themes-huh/
http://wp-design.net/
http://wpdesignblog.com/
http://wpdesignpro.com/
http://fleuron.com/?gclid=COaX3_W9npsCFSgYagodyRJ3Bg
This list is always developing and growing.
