One of the the keynote addresses from the the first regular week of the K12 Online Conference is by Alan Levine, Brian Lamb and D’arcy Norman.
The three of them have put together a video that goes through many of the web 2.0 technologies they are using in their classrooms.
I thought the most interesting section was 50 ways to tell a story. Here the speaker takes one idea (a short story) and uses 50 (actually only 49) different web tools to tell that story.
For parent’s night, the cheerleaders put together an incredible half-time routine. I have one daughter that cheers and marches with the color guard and another that plays in the band. Next weekend will be action packed. On Friday the football teams plays for the conference championship and a chance to go to the playoffs. On Sunday the band plays in the OMEA State Marching Band Finals.
Both the football team and the band have impressive streaks. The football team has won seven games in a row. The band has scored a one for twenty-seven straight years.
Good luck to both this weekend.
I just heard a presentation on Voicethread. What’s a VoiceThread?
A VoiceThread is an online media album that allows people to make comments, either audio or text, and share them with anyone they wish. A VoiceThread allows an entire group’s story to be told and collected in one place.
Images, documents (PDF, DOC, XLS, PPT) and video files can be uploaded to the system. A free account gets you 75MB of space. Then you can add audio, text or sketched comments to your files. You can permit other users to add information to your files as well.
Multiple people can create comments on the same file. This creates many opportunities for collaborative work by students and teachers.
Recording a podcast is only half of the process. Yesterday I talked about creating an MP3 file, but once you have that file, you need to get it to someone interested in hearing it. If you have your own server, you can upload your MP3 file and make it available just as you would any HTML file. If you don’t have a web server, there are many free options available. Here are a few:
http://www.mypodcast.com
http://www.ourmedia.org
http://www.podcastspot.com
http://www.twango.com/welcome/podcast.aspx
http://www.podstrike.com
http://www.podango.com
http://www.podbean.com
Keep in mind that a 20 minute podcast will produce a file that is almost 10 MB in size. You will need to store this file on a server and provide the bandwidth for listeners to download it.
Most listers will also “subscribe” to your podcast with an aggregator. This means you will need to create an RSS feed for your podcast. If your podcast service doesn’t come with an RSS creation tool, I recommend Feedburner.
1 – Create your content.
2 – Upload your MP3 file.
3 – Publish your feed.
I have some students interested in doing a podcast, and the first question is, “how do we make the MP3 file?”
When I was a kid, everyone used cassette tapes to record almost all non-professional audio. The recorders were cheap, so everyone had one.
With digital music there are many different ways to record audio. Ultimately, the idea is to get the audio into some sort of compressed audio format, like MP3. There are many paths that can lead to that digital file.
The easiest way to create digital audio is to open your laptop, start the built-in audio recorder and talk into the built-in microphone. Most laptops have a built-in microphone. It doesn’t usually create the highest quality recordings, but in a pinch it will get the job done.
The next step in producing a higher quality audio file is adding an external microphone and using more complex audio recording software. I have several headset microphones. Some of them use the microphone jack on the computer while others use a USB connection. The USB microphones are higher quality, but cost more. You can buy headset microphones just about anywhere. Here is a $15 set from Wal-Mart:
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=4064455
On the software side, the most popular free program is Audacity. It’s free, feature-rich and runs on any platform. The software can be used to record audio input, edit that input (cut, copy, splice) and finally save the audio as a digital file in a variety of formats including MP3.
If your podcast has multiple people, a “group” microphone can be used, but a more common practice is to use a service like Skype. Using this free service, multiple people can connect their computers over the Internet for an audio conversation. There are many ways to record Skype calls. Some are free.
Using a service like Skype permits an audio conversation that is not bound by geography. Participants from around the world can connect to the same session.
There is one last method of recording digital audio. There are pieces of hardware that can record without the use of a computer. I have an iRiver MP3 player (see picture above) that has a microphone jack. With this small device, I can record a live “man on the street” interview without the hassle of a bulky computer.
In the classroom, I use a Panasonic RR-US395 to record my voice. This is a dedicated digital recorder with a built-in microphone as well as a microphone jack for a lapel microphone. The software with the device can save live recordings as MP3 files on my computer via a USB connector.
