Since the last post (Show notes without a Show Radio Edutalk episode 2.5) we have taken a few more baby steps over at Radio Edutalk.

A week ago, I attempted a chat with Iain Hallahan over Skype. I basically started up Nicecast, and hyjacked the Skype audio. I’ve now figure out that if I just hyjack the one channel I don’t get the echo problem we had earlier. Settings Screenshot.

Iain talked about TeachMeet Beyond and kicking off TeachMeet 365. I think the chat went really well due to his enthusiasm about some facination projects, the audio is archived as an episode of Edutalk: Iain Hallahan on Radio Edutalk

Last night David and I tried a variation where we invited folk on twitter to come in over skype for a chat. Stephen Reid and Joe Dale kindly obliged talking about podcasting. We had a bit of bother getting them into a conference call via the dial in, but David pulled them in via their skype accounts. Stephen was on the move and joined in via 3g on his iPhone keeping our EDUtalk strapline, Audio publishing by educators, using mobile devices accurate. Again the audio is archived: Radio Edutalk 24 November 2011.

After we finished Joe gave us a wee hand sorting out the dial in stuff, in the future people will be able to dial in using any phone to 0131 208 1084.

Workflow

So we seem to be getting a workflow together. Last night it worked well with David figuring out the skype bit and myself the nicecast end. Due to space at home I was using my mackbook in my daughter’s bedroom rather than hooked up to the monitor in the living room, keeping Skype, it’s chat window, twitter and nicecast organised was a wee bit tricky. The week before having the living room and larger monitor made it a wee bit easier.

I am also beginning to understand some of the difficulties in handling live multi voice conversations. An increasing number of podcasts I’ve been listening to have had more than one presenter or voice. This makes, for me, interesting listening, but there is a bit of a learning curve, which I’ve just stared on, in doing this smoothly.

The audo quality seems to be pretty good, I am using a cheap usb mic, but hope to get a better one sometime soon.

So far we having been using Nicecast, but I’ve also downloaded a free application LadioCast which might do the same job, I need to do some tests and see if it can archive.

The other 167 hours

The rest of the week Radio Edutalk has been streaming random items for the Edutalk archive. I had also set up several Scheduled playlist, to play at 7:30 in the evening, unfortunately I’ve been away for a few days and didn’t tweet these out as I’d planned. I hope to try the same again over the next week and also try djing audio for he archive giving folk a chance to phone in at some point.

I’ve taken out a 500mb AutoDJ disk which hold the archive, it is already filled up. I don’t really want to pay for a bigger disk, a monthly charge, so the choice is some manual shuffling via ftp or perhaps changing bit rate from 128 to 64. The later would involve converting all of the files and getting the internet radio folk to change the settings for the stream. I am not sure how much the change would effect the quality?

Listeners

As yet we have not had a lot of listeners, but I’ve found myself listening in to the random stream more often that I thought, it makes interesting listening and can spark off all sorts of ideas.

Odds and ends

I’ve been collecting various internet links using linkli.st internet radio · linkli.st a failry new service that makes creating list of links very simple. I love the way you can create bookmarklets for any of your links screenshot.

I also use Storify to curate some tweets for last nights broadcast to include with the show notes: Radio Edutalk 20111124 · johnjohnston · Storify, Storify is easy to use and looks useful.

Next Wednesday

David and I will be talking at around 8 o’clock and the lines will be open, if you are online have a listen and if you like dial in (0131 208 1084) to put in your tuppence worth. Given the date I presume we will be talking strike along with some general eduTalk and edTechTalk.

Radio edtalk 120

I attempted going live on Radio Edutalk – EDUtalk this evening. David had to drop out as he was working so I just rambled about things of ed tech interest for half an hour. I forgot to archive the audio.

I started out talking about my morning introducing some primary pupils to ipod touches and covered some iOS links. went through some recent blogs I’ve read and talked a bit about #EDUscotICT.

I did say I'd publish the show notes so here they are:

I had some feedback as I went on Twitter, especially from Stephen Reid (Thanks Stephen) johnjohnston's Archive on from:AHigherPlaceLtd @johnjohnston

Cross posted on EDUtalk – Audio publishing by educators, using mobile devices

Radio Edutalk has been up and running for a week or so now. We had our first attempt at a live skype last Wednesday (archive). This was not hitch free as I messed up the settings making my audio echo, David on the other end of the Skype call and an iTunes track or two seemed fine. I think I know how to fix it.

The listener numbers have ben low with 45 unique listeners. We peeked at 6 at once. This is fine, it might build up a wee bit over time. As I mentioned in the previous radio post, it is not about numbers. The low numbers will also make it easier to keep the radio turning over 24 hours a day. The current plan is:

  1. A general random rotation of over 100 files from the EDUtalk archive most of the time.
  2. An hour of themed audio from 7:30 – 8:30 most nights (programmed by myself at the moment).
  3. A live hour at 8:00-9:00 on Wednesdays from David and myself, hopefully with some phone ins & scheduled guests.
  4. I’d also be interested in “DJing” some of the audio in some sort of theme as an alternative to the autoDJ and in the longer term we would be interested in others having a go. We are also open to adding to our pile of audio files, so if you or someone you know has some interesting audio please get in touch. I guess we could also add any suitable licensed material…

Hopefully you might find something of interest if you dip in to the stream in, perhaps as you do some marking or prep.

Popcorn Hackasaurus

Yesterday I heard a few intriguing boos from Mozilla Festival by Doug Belshaw and Leon Cychwhich sent me on a day trip round the internet. I discovered:

Hackasaurus makes it easy to mash up and change any web page like magic. You can also create your own webpages to share with your friends, all within your browser. for which there is an educators guide and even a lesson plan.

and:

Popcorn.js is an HTML5 media framework written in JavaScript for filmmakers, web developers, and anyone who wants to create time-based interactive media on the web. Popcorn.js is part of Mozilla’s Popcorn project.

among a host of other interesting things. Rather than blog about it I used these tools to create somethings:

A spoof 2015 BBC News – X-RAY GoGGLES improves pupils performance in exams

Playing with hackasaurus and popcorn

I think that hackasaurus in particular could be very useful in the classroom. Popcorn gives us a way to make complex media projects in particular HyperVidio and HyperAudio which act in the same way as HyperText. I’d love some feedeback on this stuff, if you think it could work in your classroom?

Radio edutalk

Edutalk has now been running for over 2 years, we have published over 300 pieces of educational audio. These vary from TeachMeet recording, through to personal reflection by way of pupil podcasts. Hopefully theses provide interesting and educational listens.

One of the things that David and I talked about when we started EDUtalk was issuing a CD rom of recordings, this would perhaps have helped to keep older, still valuable, audio playing.

One of my thoughts about podcasts is that older episodes get forgotten about in a way that old blogs posts, through searching, do not.

REcently I’ve been reading about and listening to ds106 Radio and Stephen’s Downes’ Ed Radio. These are Internet radio stations. My interest was also stimulated by my daughter who is currently doing some pro bono work for Airing Pain « Pain Concern a podcast and internet radio.

I’ve alway believed (and gone on about) one of the benefits of podcasting over radio is its asynchronously. The potential audience for internet radio would seem to be less. A few things have made me think again:

A comment on Stephen Downes – Google+ about ED Radio:

That's the intent of Ed Radio, it's not something you really focus on, it's more background where you listen while you work & where something may or may not catch your attention.

Somewhere else, Stephen wrote about the interesting challenge of broadcasting to no listeners. Can’t find the quote at the moment.

on broadcasting to radio #ds106 | D’Arcy Norman dot net

How does the ability to instantly broadcast live audio to a group of people impact what we do? How does this instant synchronous connection effect the sense of social presence? And how does having to make the decision of streaming vs. recording effect the experience of sharing?

I’ve also been impressed by the quality of internet radio when streaming to a phone on g3 as well as wifi. So we though we would give this a go

How to

There are various posts on the how to set up a station but I basically went to Internet Radio Servers and set up an Icecast server on pay as you go. I then followed CogDog Guide to Nicecasting – CogDogBlog to test Nicecast. You can use Nicecast to broadcast from iTunes or a mix of iTunes and voice or even iTunes, voice and Skype. You can use Nicecast for an hour at a time for free and pay when you have tested it. I am using it on test mode at the moment. I have also tested the AutoDJ set up, where the station just streams from a set of mp3 you have uploaded via ftp. this seems to works well. Instructions on Internet Radio Servers are straightforward.

I’ve briefly tested Papaya Broadcaster a £2.99 iPhone & iPad app this seem to do the trick. allowing you to broadcast on the move.

A Plan

The costs at the moment £5 a month to host the AutoDJ files and £5 per 10GB broadcast. I am figuring with only a few listeners it will only be £10 a month to broadcast for an hour or so each night, using a variety of sources.

We have a few loose ideas of what to broadcast:

  • Broadcasting sets of audio from the Edutalk Archive on AutoDJ 7:30 to 8:30 each night. The hope is that folk will have it on in the background listening for serendipitous educational audio. I’ve not really worked out the queuing of the audio but will select some and mix then up every day or two. So far I’ve downloaded and converted to the correct samplerate & bitrate over 60 files.
  • Once a week on Wednesdays David and I will attempt some sort of skpye in show where folk can skype in for a chat, we still have to test this. This can be recorded and fed back into Edutalk as a podcast.
  • Curated sets from the Archive, using nicecast and iTunes, possibly opening it up to guest hosts.
  • Live event broadcasts, for example from a TeachMeet using Papaya Broadcaster.
  • Anything else we can dream up or is suggested…

Tech Tips (for geeky teachers)

It seems that you need to use files that all have the same sample rate, bitrate and number of channels. I’ve started off with 60-70 files downloaded from Edutalk , the problem is these do not all have the same sample rate, bitrate and number of channels This can be dome by opening and exporting the files from Audacity, or exporting them from iTunes. This could take quite a while. A quick google found a script for the Lame lib (That is used by Audacity to export mp3s), You need to instal Lame so that it is available for command line use, this sort of stuff can be daunting but worth it as a time saver.

What I did was open the Terminal, navigate to the folder full of mp3s (on a mac you can type cd and then drag a folder onto the terminal window), then you just put this int othe terminal window and hit return:

mkdir save && for f in *.mp3; do lame -m m -b 128 –resample 44.1 "$f" ./save/"${f%.mp3}.mp3"; done

What that does is make a new folder save inside the mp3 folder, then use lame to convert all the mp3s in the folder into new files in the save folder that all have a bitrate of 128, a sample rate of 44.12 and are mono files. Well worth doing if only to avoid having to see asave dialog 60 times.

How to listen

between 7:30 and 8:30 head over to Radio Edutalk – EDUtalk. A flash player should start when the page opens. There are also buttons to listen with winamp, Windows Media player, Real player or QuickTime. Hit the title song to open in iTunes.

I’d love to hear what folk think, ideas for broadcasts or cc licensed audio that could be played.

I love the example of the Bay Bridge in San Francisco. A decision was made in the 1990s to replace half the bridge, and rebuild the other half. And all this had to be done while the bridge, which is core to the flow of life in the Bay Area, continued to function. The human species is good at this kind of evolution. And when all is said and done, there will be a new bridge where the old one stood, and the people who travel over it will not remember that there was another bridge here, or care

Neither hardware nor software excite me very much, after whatever brief (and usually painful) novelty has worn off.

Good interface design is as transparent as possible, because I don’t want to have to think about it. I just want to write, or do whatever else I’m doing, and not have to think about whatever I’m doing it on.

Timely from my point of view reminder. Although I am excited about hardware & software.

I’ve spent a fair bit of time mulling over this post: Laurie O’Donnell » Glowing into the Future and writing a comment. This turned into more of a post than a comment.

Laurie’s post was originally published in the TESS Glowing into the future may be easier said than done – News – TES and I am grateful that he also blogged it as I don’t read the TES.

I am pulling some quotes out of context, and order, and adding my 2d worth, if you have not already done so I recommend reading the post.

It is interesting to get the perspective of someone who is at the other end of the ranks than myself and who has a different viewpoint and a lot more knowledge of the bigger picture than I have.

The mainstream tools that are available free on the internet are fine, but to be usable in an educational context they should work off a single directory. It is also important that your stuff can be found easily irrespective of where and how it was created. Culture, confidence, practice, behaviours and engagement are also important but so is having the right tools, in the right place at the right time. Today’s open tools far too often become tomorrow’s commercial services. In many free services, such as Facebook, the user is less ‘the customer’ and more ‘the product’, with their personal data (preferences, pictures, contacts and habits) up for sale to the highest bidder. Not so bad if you sign-up for this as a private individual but perhaps not something the Scottish Government should be doing on behalf of our children.

I too fear the idea of our pupils becoming the product for someone to sell. I also like the single directory/signon, this must be made as simple as facebook (logon with facebook) but as secure as glow.

The Cabinet Secretary calls for a solution that is not based on ‘big companies investing in big projects’ but all the options on the eduscotict wiki appear to centre on either a Google or Microsoft based cloud solution.

I’ve long be of the opinion that a ScotEduTube would be no bad thing.I’d like to see Glow become a centre connecting the best of breed free and paid for stuff hosted on national servers. When I think of using Open Tools, I think of things like wordpress, or an open source wiki that can be hosted and controlled, rather than using services that become tomorrow’s commercial services.

The best thing about Glow, in my opinion, was it got around the various worries about safety and access to tools that beleaguer the use of ICT in the classroom. When blogs were added to glow there was no need for a discussion as to the validity of using them as they carried the stamp of national approval.

Everybody that I know has been arguing for many years that Glow needed to change radically, despite the fact that it already incorporates some of the same open source collaborative tools that will feature prominently as part of the new approach.

These tools surely were added because we argued that glow needed to change radically. Unfortunately they way they were added was fairly clunky and limited the tools. For example the blogs are limited to a handful of themes and plugins. The way that they are connected to ones glow account precluded the use of the MetaWebBlogApi and there use on mobile devices.

Given that, the folk who I’ve introduced blogs to have mainly needed help with the initial setup in the portal rather than working the blog once it has been setup.

I might be coming over as a glow naysayer but I am not, Glow has been my main occupation for the last few years, I’ve created a ton of groups, helped and trained lots of teachers and logged on 100s of pupils. I appreciate the fact that glow gave ict in education a huge push and was well resourced though the local and national governments.

We might not have reached the ambition of having every student, every teacher and every parent using Glow every day but the level of engagement dwarfs the number of people who have contributed to the largely disappointing #eduscotict wiki that was set-up following the announcement.

It might be a wee bit disingenuous to compare the levels of engagement of a short term wiki with a long term project that had a huge effort from LAs across Scotland and with many LTS & RM folk facilitating this engagement. Given the time frame, the fact that most Scottish teachers have never interacted on a public website or edited a Wiki I think we got the sort of response I’d expect.

I encouraged all the local ICT co-ordinators here to contribute, none, to my knowledge did. Some told me they had tried but found the level of technical language impenetrable and off-putting. Although many teachers have used glow to facilitate their children’s learning there are comparatively few who engage in online discussions inside or outside glow. If you compared the number of teachers who had contributed to a glow discussion or forum in the same timeframe as the #eduscotict wiki it might be a fairer comparison?

I do worry, as I believe Laurie does, that this #eduscotict initiative is moving very quickly. I do worry that a slanted picture of needs will emerge. To open up this debate to colleagues across Scotland would need more channels that seem to have been provided.

I wonder if this lack of participation, and inclusion of view for all sectors may set up the same category of problem as Glow 1. To my eyes (very much a particular perspective) the conceit and concept of glow was outstanding, the work done in bringing in LAs across Scotland was groundbreaking. The problems arose from the implementation, the software chosen. I wonder how long the decision makers tested sharepoint, I wonder how many teachers were invited to test, in real classrooms, how it was supposed to work, or were the decisions taken on demos, walkthroughs and pre built examples. I hope that when deciding on the new solution the decision makers test things at same time as full-time teaching, I wonder if they can do it in the time available?.

The way #EDUScotICT seems to panning out is that we are getting more opinion from troops on the ground, but perhaps we are getting it from a quite small sub-set of these troops: the specialists, the ones who are experienced in using online tools the believers who will go the extra mile to get thing working. The challenge for the government is to expand the debate.

Although the eduscotict / ICT Summit has overtaken this post, and I’ve probably changed my mind on some of the above, I thought I’d post his before starting to think about this afternoon’s discussion.