homework are #pedagoomuckle #edutalk
Glasgow, Glasgow City, Scotland
This audio file was orginally posted to AudioBoo(m) with the mobile app. It has been added here since audioboom no longer supports free accounts.
#PedagooMuckle Tech Tools – Record and Share your event online
These are some note from/for the Pedagoo Muckle event. I’ll update this with a few more details over the next few days.
Supported by SCEL and with a slightly different format, #PedagooMuckle aims to support, challenge and encourage participants to go forth and organise their own Pedagoo events, TeachMeets and other collaborative, sharing opportunities for educators.
I was asked to talk about how to broadcast and share your event. I am very much an enthusiastic amateur in this field. This is a quick romp through some of the available tools from a quick and dirty point of view.
The premise is that these events are worth sharing and folk can get value from attending virtually or catching up later.
Distributed in Space & Time, live or archive
Is is possible to either record for posterity, broadcast live or both.
Both give different affordances, recording shares across space and time, live broadcast may allow distant listeners to participate via twitter.
Short snippets may provide more value than recording whole events. Instead of recording a whole presentation or workshop 3-5 minutes with the presenter can be useful, or record a conversation between two or more presenters or attendees.
Before you start
What have you got in the way of equipment and more importantly space? How much effort will it be for what sort of size of audience? What you equipment will the results be watchable or audible?
Who is going to do the broadcast. Have they any other jobs.
Audio vs Video
Personally I prefer audio, less to go wrong or get right. Audio can also be listened to while the audience are washing the dishes or driving.
Don’t forget text might be better, can be easier to give multiple viewpoints. Twitter is the easiest currently for live text.
Some Tools
These are towards the quick and dirty end of spectrum.
Sound is the most important ###
Mic types (Mostly I am just glad to have a mic)
- omnidirectional pattern – all directions are equally sensitive to sound.
- figure-8 pattern – the front and back are sensitive, while the sides are ignored.
- cardioid pattern – meaning the area in front of the mic is most sensitive, the sides are less sensitive, and the rear is ignored.
Video Recording
Smart Phone/ video camera for watching later. Simple. Audio is important so consider adding a mic to the camera or your phone.
Use a stand.
Try to test the light, field of view and sound before the event starts.
Live Video
YouTube, the set up has recently changes, see When it’s Your Googopoly Game, You Can Flip the Board in the Air Anytime for details.
TL:DR Youtube streaming has got a little more complex. Best to go for the simplest options:
Go to YouTube and log in
- On your profile icon at the top left click on your icon
- Choose Creator Studio
- Click Live Streaming on the left had nav
- Ignore all the choices and click events below the Live Streaming option
- Schedule a new event
- Create a new event and Go Live Now (avoid Advance Settings)
- The Hangout will open, use the link button to copy the link and send it out on twitter.
Or schedule an event and share the link to the watch page ahead of time.
Periscope iOS and android app, integrated with twitter. Works really well. Can save to camera roll.
Ustream apps for live streaming with chat.
Audio Recording
All smart phones have some sort of recorder built in. This will work fine for archiving. Get the phone as near to the speaker as possible if you do not have an external mic.
There are a host of better audio recorders, you can borrow some from Edutalk, including a Zoom H4n which is a nice piece of kit.
Audacity or GarageBand, again an external mic is a good idea.
AudioBoom is very useful for recording and sharing short pieces of audio, conversations etc. Add the hashtag #edutalk to auto post to http://edutalk.info
#EDUtalk
Audio Streaming
Edutalk, we use a icecast server and are happy to share the account. There are apps to stream to icecast servers on all platforms. A bit more of a learning curve but we are happy to share.
Archiving Recordings
You want it to be as easy as possible for as many people as possible to view or listen to the recordings.
Edit or Not?
The Levelator® from The Conversations Network
Other Things
Bonus sign up forms’ e.g. google forms eventbrite etc?
http://activitywalls.com or other tweet displays if you have a second monitor
#Edutalk at Pedagoo Muckle
If you going to the Pedagoo Muckle I would like to invite to contribute to EDUtalk.
EDUtalk is, among other things, an open to any contributions podcast. EDUtalk started at the Scottish learning Festival in 2009 when David Noble and myself invited any of the attendees to submit audio to a podcast SLFtalk. We were trying to provide alternate sources of information and reflections about the festival and make it as easy as possible for people to both contribute and listen to the contributions of others.
Now is even easier to contribute to EDUtalk. This only need to be a minute or two long.
Here are a couple of ways ways:
Audioboom an application for both iPhone and android, Audioboo allows you to record short segments of audio and upload then to the Audioboo site. If you tag the ‘boo’ #EDUtalk they will be brought in automatically to the EDUtalk site.
Just record some audio on anything a computer on smartphone whatever you got. Then you can email it to audio@edutalk.info and we’ll take it from there.
You can have conversations with anyone about anything educational, at the coffee bar , in a quiet corner. it can be about whatever, educational, topic you like. Your thoughts we want them.
If you can’t make it to Pedagoo Muckle this could be one way to join in the fun.
Microcast 4: Audacity Disaster
Back in class, technical difficulties bite. some learning requires. I intended to record and post this this week but just put it together quickly after reading the ScotEdChat this week.
I don’t even like liver
A day to go in Week two of 23 Things so a rather rushed approach.
Thing 3: Digital Footprint, reading includes:
It is important for you to think about how you manage your activity online in the context of your emerging professional identity (or identities) and what you need to do to manage an effective online presence and your digital footprint.
Student e-Professionalism
Which sums up the problem fairly nicely.
after the reading the task was to Google yourself. Go to Google.com, type in your name, and see what results come up.
The first thing to note is that I am redirected to google.co.uk
From as owning own my name pov this looks pretty good. The fly in the ointment is the location. The only John Johnston higher than me is a Glasgow photographer.
It turns out it is quite hard to get results from google without using your location (I googled it). So I gave up and turned to Duck Duck go.
Another fine 23 Things to get into
Last week after our DS106 Good Spell broadcast Mariana told me about 23 Things. This looks like an interesting course for Edinburgh University students, staff and anyone with access to the internet.
I had a quick look at the list of things covered in the course 23 Things List – 23 Things. These look interesting enough to sign up.
The idea is to try out a couple of things each week and blog about them. So here we go
Week One: Introduction and Blogging – 23 Things
Write a blog post and tag it 23ThingsEdUni. (When you tag a blog post with 23ThingsEdUni, so long as your blog has been registered, that post will be pulled into our 23 Things Community Blog. This way you can share your thoughts and experiences with others on the programme.)
Use your blog to write a short post about:
A) what you hope to gain out of the 23 Things programme.
B) were you aware of the University’s Social Media Guidelines for Staff and Researchers or the student Social Media Student Handbook? What do you think of the guidelines/handbook?
A. I hope to rethink the sort of things I’ve been doing online for a while. Take the opportunity to dig in to some things I think I know about in a little depth. Some of my ideas have not been revisited for quite a few years.
I am also interested in taking another open online course, I’ve been hanging round ds106 for a while and ran a couple of small course for primary schools last year. I’ve a real belief that these types of course can be pretty powerful.
B. I was aware of North Lanarkshire’s Social Media policy. One of thing I really like about it is that they recognise that schools can use social media in useful ways and need to have a deal of freedom in doing so.
The council uses third-party software to manage its social media networks. Any new official page/site will be required to be managed using this software. There is an exception for Learning & Leisure services staff in schools where social media is used as part of a teaching and learning environment or as a communication tool.
My Emphasis.
I’ve a twitter list of NLC Schools which is quite vibrant.
*Featured image: Flickr Photo: Bobbi Newman – CC BY-NC-SA
Back to class and classroom blogging
For the last few (twelve) years I’ve been a enthusiastic proponent of blogging by pupils. I only actually carried this out in the classroom from 2004 till 2008 when I started work in North Lanarkshire as an ICT staff development officer.
Since then I’ve run plenty of courses around blogging, continued to blog myself and investigated lots of blogging systems. I also support pupils setting up e-Portfolio blogs in many classroom in flying visits. I spent a couple of years working on Glow Blogs and continue to provide support for Glow Blogs on a part time basis.
I’ve got a strong opinion of the positive value of pupils posting about their learning. I hope as I provided support and encouragement for pupil posting that I kept in mind the difficulties of organising this in class.
I am now back to eating my own dog food and again in the position to blog about ‘Teaching, ict, and suchlike’ from the position of a classroom teacher.
In many respects I’ve landed on my feet. I’ve got a very small class of delightful pupils, a good range of hardware and due to the small numbers, bandwidth that is not awful.
However I am feeling pretty out of my depth in regards to the changes in curriculum and practise that have happened in my absence from the classroom.
Beginning with blogs
On the practising what you preach front I’ve started using Glow Blogs. We set up e-Portfolos a couple of weeks ago. I am pretty pleased all the hard work of the Glow Blogs team has paid off from a technical angle. I am not working to hard on the idea of profiling yet, just trying to get the class enthused about owning their own space.
We have also started a class blog Banton Biggies – The Tallest Class in Banton Primary and the pupils have made a couple of posts. Fell free to pop over and leave us a comment.
First thing I’ve noticed is that it doesn’t get any easier organising time for pupils to post. The ideal is to give them enough time to write a well written reflective post, but also not missing out on too much of the current classroom activity.
The other thing that has changed is the familiarity of current pupils with the Internet. There is a lot of that I need to explore and discuss. Being a YouTuber is an aspiration of more than one pupil I am working with.
Of course this familiarity with the Internet does not come packaged with some of the things I an interested, safety, copyright, controlling your own data, along with technical skills, knowledge of file types, urls, keyboard shortcuts and the rest. A lot of learning will hopefully be sparked by discussing blogging.
We have also started using Glow O365, mostly word and Onedrive so far and I’ll have a fair bit to reflect on that too. I also set up a Yammer group for the pupils, with little instruction about what to do with it. There was a huge wave of enthusiasm from the pupils, but left to their own devices they have mostly posted hi messages. I think I’ll have to seed the group with some ideas to get things going.
Joining some dots
What I am hoping that I can do with the blogging is to start the pupils reading other pupils posts making some connections perhaps with other small schools. Hopefully I can get a podcast together too, watch that space.
Get in touch if you have pupils posting that would like a few comments or would be interested in some sort of blog to blog communication. It might take me a wee while to get going but that’s the direction I hope to travel in.
Featured image: Flickr Photo: simpleinsomnia – CC BY stamped with attribution with FlickrCC Stampr
Open Mic on Radio #Edutalk
I’ve just had my first broadcast of the new session on Radio Edutalk.
Radio EDUtalk 14-09-2016 Nicholas McMahon Philosophy with Children in the Primary Classroom I really enjoyed it.
Unfortunately I’ve got no more shows lined up at the moment. I’m waiting for a few replied, but the Wednesday schedule is empty. Some of this is down to my lack of organisation some to other things on the go and some my change in circumstances.
If you are interested in talking about any aspect of Education on a Wednesday evening (8pm UK time)please let me know.
The featured image on this post is Open Mic Night at the Sarcophogous | Art Institute of Chicag…r shared by my pal Alan on Flickr using a Creative Commons — Attribution 2.0 Generic — CC BY 2.0 license.
Be Nice
- They comment on other people’s posts.
- They like other people’s posts.
- They share them.
- They…
from: What do nice Internet users do?
Click through to see all 12 points from Dave Winer who should know, having blogged as long than anyone.
From a education PoV good advice for reading and responding to pupils post, but applicable everywhere.
Featured image: Nice to be important by Michelle Grewe on Flickr shared with a Creative Commons — CC0 1.0 Universal license, which was nice.
Recommended Read: ChromeStead
ChromeStead is a really interesting blog from Guy Shearer who is head of IT and data at David Ross Eduction Trust, which I think is a private school.
From the title you would think it was all Google and chromebooks but the schools seems to use a mix of Google Apps, O365 and other products. This makes an enjoyable change from blogs from the PoV of one company supporter or another. The idea of using a mix is very appealing. The school has single sign on for both services, which I believe is possible using RM unify now.
Also from From a Glow perspective there are a lot of interesting posts about O365. Here is an example aside.
(I just wish someone at Microsoft could forget to invite the Sharepoint team to the next planning day so that they can come up with a Classroom competitor that works cleanly and simply like Sway).
ChromeStead: Sway: presentations reimagined, and some general thoughts on O365