Month: November 2011

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But the problem, according to those campaigning for change, begins at school with ICT – a subject seen by its detractors as teaching clerical skills rather than any real understanding of computing.

And it seems school children are getting that message too because the numbers studying the subject are on the decline. The answer, according to the firms and organisations calling for change, is to put proper computer science in the form of coding on the curriculum.

via bbc.co.uk

Not sure the detractors are completely right, surely we have seen, in some places, a swing away from the clerical.

We have seen lots of games based stuff being written about although I am not sure how far it has penetrated into the mainstream. There is certainly a need for the more creative use of ict if not coding then the creation of media.

  • Hackasaurus
  • The Consolarium
  • Digital Storytelling | We jam econo

    • springs to mind.

    I wonder if there is a tension between a more creative use of ICT and the current drive to save money?

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    The idea of Edutalk Radio is twofold, first to live stream random selections of the existing bank of audio collected on the Edutalk site and secondly to offer educators the opportunity to call or Skype into a live phone in and chat about topics of their choice.

    via joedale.typepad.com

    Joe Dale does a great job of describing the Edutalk, Edutalkr & Radio Edutalk projects. I’ve tried to do this a few time but Joe nails it. Much appreciated.

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    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.

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    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

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    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.

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    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?