Tag: podcasting

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Yep it is another iPhone post. For the last 3 weeks I’ve been spending two forty-five minute periods on the train almost every weekday and I have been finding the iPhone very useful. I’ve downloaded several games but as expected I’ve not really spent much time playing them, I just do not seem to be a gamer of any sort. This is what I have been using it for:

Listening to podcasts: mostly booruch so far, I’ll be adding a few more subscriptions and listening to podcasts more often; I lost the habit a while back but this is a good opportunity to pick it up again.

Mail I only have one account synced with my phone, but I’ve been able to deal with quite a few emails on the go and keep up with a couple of lists.

RSS feeds: I use NetNewsWire on my home mac, one at work and my iPhone. The app syncs beautifully between the clients. NetNewsWire’s interface is famous and the iPhone app lives up to its bigger brothers reputation. It is simple and easy to use. Rather than just read posts I tend to use the Add to Clippings feature this results in the posts ‘clipped’ being added to the clippings folder in the desktop application the next time it is synced. This is a great feature that I hope to exploit even more. A while back I used to post a regular set of link to interesting blog posts to the Masterclass forum, I’d collect posts in NetNewWire’s clipping folder and then get the links out via appleScript to add a few comments before posting them. I am hoping to start doing something similar soon. Collecting suitable links on the train will help. I usually sync NetNewsWire on the phone before leaving home or the office but syncing on the move is reasonably quick. Another useful feature of NetNewsWire is that you can delete feeds from the phone and specify that they will still be synced to your desktop, this means I don’t clog the iPhone app with really busy feeds.

Twitter: there are various views on the utility of twitter, I put it squarely into the useful pile (maybe a venn diagram with silly and fun would be better). On the desktop I’ve used Twitterrific and more recently I’ve become a TweetDeck fan. On the phone I’d settled on the add supported version of Twitterrific which has the advantage of being able to tweet locations and upload photos to twitpic and tweet that. This week I’ve been using iTweet a wonderful web app with browser and phone interfaces. Due to it being a web app and having landscape mode I am finding it better for posting tweets, unfortunately being a web app it can’t access locations or photos. Again saving for later is a useful feature, with twitter I do this by favouring tweets for later, usually ones that link to elsewhere on the web.

Video: I’ve also been watching a few videos notably the Ted Talks my attention span for watching video on my home mac is short, but I’ve found that I can settle down to watch Teds and other video content on my phone on the train.

What I do not do much of with the phone is type, twitter’s 140 characters are fine and short emails are ok, I’ve installed EasyWriter, which allows landscape emailing to help with my fat fingers. It might be useful to have some sort of wireless/bluetooth or connected keyboard the Apple wireless keyboard works on the N95 so it would be nice to have something similar on the iPhone, I could see me banging in a pile of text on the train, to be edited and corrected later on a desktop ideally a small foldable keyboard.

Another interesting app that I’ve just bought (59p) is voiceNote, this is yet another voice recorder, but what I think is its most interesting feature is it’s ability to email the audio as an mp3 file, this means it could be used for podcast by mailing the mp3 to posterous unfortunately the emails are sent via voiceNote and have voiceNote as the email address, so do not arrive on your posterous if you send them to posterous@posterous.com. What works is to send them to your phones email address and then forward to posterous, not too much trouble. The audio quality was not great when it arrived at my iPhone Podcast 2 but it is a pretty simple way to podcast, I mam not sure how well it work outside wireless range.

What I would like to see is an email app that could email, photos, audio recording and location and to be able to use that to post to posterous (it would be nice to do video too). As mentioned above the Twitterrific application can grab locations and tweet them and photos and tweet them via twitpic so it should be possible to have that sort of functionality in mail.

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posterous is a new blogging tool that takes simple to extremes. To post to posterous you just send an email to post@posterous.com from any email account, the mail is posted and you get a reply. At that point you can set up a posterous page/blog and then everything sent to posterous from the same email (you can add more) will go onto the posterous page. Mine is John’s posterous.

What is really clever is how posterous deals with content.

Text becomes, well text, and image is posted as you would expect, but so is a image url). A series of images are turned into a mimi gallery. Powerpoint is passed over to Scribd and presented on the posterous page with iPaper as are pdfs. If you print a pdf frpm Safari on a mac and mail it to posterous, the pdf is displated via scribd and the links on the page are live (example). Pasting an image, say a screenshot, into your email app puts it on the blog, as does pasting code from kwout: kwout example. I managed to create 10 posts of all sorts without any problems, on a mac you can even Drag and Drop to Posterous via a simple Automator workflow.
Youtube and other video service are embedded as are mp3s.

posterous is just out the wrappers, but the developers really seem on the ball

For education, I am thinking this is a really quick way to create a blog, a series of resources for learners (rss of course), a student portfolio etc. With 1 GB of space you could use it for podcasting much simpler than many other methods.

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For a blog that claims to be mostly what we are doing with ict in class I’ve not posted much about that recently. Things have be coming a bit thick and fast for reflection. This is just a wee note about some things that have been going on over the last couple of weeks.

cd lauren 180

One afternoon a week I take a bunch of children from or primary six classes to work on self esteem, emotional literacy and the like through practical activities. The most recent activity is drawing to a close. It this the children created short tunes with GarageBand, then designed covers for a cd. The covers were further edited with picnik. We then burned cds with all 12 tracks and published the mp3s and art on the website: Sandaig Primary Wiki Primary6Project. The children are in the middle of adding a bit of writing to the wiki to round up the project.

Juke tn

We have been using GarageBand around the school too. My musical ability has been taken to its limit just making a minute of loop music so I’ve roped in our peripatetic music teacher Martian Douglas who is working with groups of children on a Friday afternoon. At the moment they are just using the loops provided, but Martin is working on incorporating drumming and guitar played by the children. The music made so far can be heard on the Sandaig Jukebox.

On Wednesday afternoons I teach ‘the other’ primary six class to cover NCC time. This term I am teaching the Sound part of the glasgow Sound and light topic. I am using a modified topic created by Alisa Barr of nearby Mount Vernon Primary when the children work in groups on challenges to cover the learning outcomes. This has been quite challenging for me and i am not sure I spent enough time on preparing for group work, despite the fat I had attended a couple of cpd events by Alisa on just that.
I’ve give the topic a slight web 2 spin as I present the challenges on the Sandaig Primary Wiki SoundAndLight. The first challenge we did as a class and published our findings as a mp3. The next section was on The Ear and the groups tried a variety of ways of reporting their findings. In the current challenge Sound Travels different groups have been set different tasks and seem to be widening there reporting methods (not published yet).

These two project have been my first step of using a wiki at school, at the moment the children need support for publishing but hopefully this will improve. Some of the publishing is a bit tricky, eg powerpoint to slideshare and then a recipe to put on wiki. I am using PmWiki which is not wysiwyg but seems to be working out well enough.

The topic was interrupted this week by health week which should have been a excellent chance to get the children blogging, but in reality they were to busy with activities, there is a wee movie in the works and hopefully it will be blogged next week.

In the midst of the Health week we had a visit from Johanna Hall from BBC Scotland, Johanna had commented on the Sandaig Otters’ blog about Radio Sandaig. She came in to give the children a chance to work on recording some content for the BBC (links when I know them). She also gave a masterclass on speaking and recording for the 12 children involved which I hope they will cascade to their classmates. This also gave me a bit of impetus to get the podcast flowing and we put out a special this week with another one nearly finished. My HT kindly gave me some time out of class to work on these before Johanna’s visit. Johanna took them away with her recording to work into an up and coming BBC production.

I am sure I’ve missed one or two things out, but that is probably quite enough for now.

Blogged from tm

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Otters Blog

A while ago I was moaning about not managing to get the kids blogging, this sessions class are a very different bunch than last years and I’ve been struggling to get them posting to the blog regularly enough to get familiar with the tools.

The answer turns our to be, same as last session, to get the children to organise the rota, two children organise the random selection of a couple of others to choose what to blog about, take photos, and blog the next day (I download the photos before school).

Radio Sandaig has also been less than regular in its output. I’ve been trying to organise it by getting children from 4 classes to write and record segments, as teachers and children are busier than ever, it is getting harder and harder to find the time. Last session I was out of class teaching ict across the school and could make some time, this session I am back in class and have been using my NCC time. It was not enough, especially as the children had to write in their own time at home. This month I think I’ve solved the problem, on Thursdays I am having a Radio Sandaig Working Lunch this involves opening our media room up and letting the children write. We probably now have too much material. Interestingly this session I have more children wanting to write about outside school activities, mostly TV and movie reviews, than class work, I guess this is because they feel more ownership of their segments.

Next session I think I’ll take the podcast back inside my own class and develop it as a talking, listening and reflection tool as part of our language and pse program.

So despite a few frustrations (mostly with tools I’d love to use being unavailable for technical reasons or filtered out) I am feeling pretty positive about using ‘social media’ and online tools. I’ve also got a nice new project to unveil soon and a couple of interesting ideas (well interesting to me anyway) to blog about, more frequent posting ahead.

Blogged from tm

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EdTechRoundup is a new podcast from an open group of UK educators which I have become involved in.

EdTechRoundup is a place where a group of UK-based educators come together for discussion and collaboration around the use of technology in education. We believe in pedagogically-sound uses of educational technology, but don?t believe in ramming Web 2.0 (or anything else for that matter) down people?s throats?

The first podcast is out. This one sees David Noble and Sinclair Mackenzie at the controls with input from Joe Dale.

They discuss tools for the classroom including ClassTools.net: Flash Templates for Educators and the problems of online content being blocked in schools. Joe Dale provides his top 5 reasons to use blogs in class or school.

The dual presenter with input from a guest is going to be the pattern for the show with a different set of presenters taking over for each show. A fair number of UK educators are involved (see the edtechroundup » Contact Details page) and the podcast is open to anyone to join in. In good social media fashion the podcast has been organised on a wiki and a series of FlashMeetings. The Meetings are announced on the wiki so it is easy to join in.

Apart for planning the podcast the meetings have been good fun and a lot of interesting areas of tech and social media discussed. If the first show and these discussions are anything to go by EdTechRoundup should be a good feed to add to iTunes or other podcatcher.

Tom Barrett and myself will be hosting the next podcast which should be out in a couple of weeks.

Blogged from tm

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We have just published the first podcast of the session on Radio Sandaig. A new bunch of children and as usual a scramble to fit it into the day. A few lunchtimes and some non-class-contact time got it done. (The children are not all in my class, so I guess this is NCC).I decided to use garageBand instead of Audacity this year, just to see what the differences are. I’ve already started some children off making some simple music using Garageband, and our peripatetic music teacher has joined in working with a few children every week. So we have incorporated one of the pieces of music into the podcast.

For the first time with GarageBand, I took a lot more control than usual of recording, mostly to figure out what we are doing and these are first impressions. Garageband has a pile of useful loops, jingles etc built in, these are easy to review and pull in. For the rest of the session I hope to find time for children to make jingles that will be used regularly, this should make the show sound a bit more professional once we start to really think about this. The auto ducking is also nice, with audacity the children hand ducked the background track as they organised the segments.
One of the things I really liked about audacity was the way you could record segments of a podcast in any order and then the children could easily move them around as they made the final edit. We recorded each segment on a separate track. With GarageBand you get a male voice and female voice tracks, jingle and music tracks. This means we will have to plan out the podcast in more detail and record it in order, this will present a bit more of a challenge to my organisation. At the moment I invite children from 4 classes to contribute so have to find time when they are available at the same time as myself (playtime, NCC time), some thinking to do.

Anyway please have a listen and if you like the show you might like to leave an audio response on the Radio Sandaig page, give us our first review in itunes or on our new Scotcast.net listing. Thanks to Tim Geddes of Glaitness School for pointing me to Scotcast.net. Tim helps the children with the TV Glaitness Video Podcast, which is well worth watching.

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As I mentioned earlier I recorded some of the presentations from TeachMeet07. I’ve turned these into a enhanced podcast. spent a bit more time in GarageBand and am beginning to understand a bit more about it and it’s relationship to the other iLife apps. As usually I made a silly mistake or two, the main one being I did not know the maximum length depended on the tempo of the Master Track. This lead me to having to change that after I had organised all the chapter marks and links, I then had to reposition these on the time line which took me most of the afternoon.

Anyway time well spent, as teachMeet07 has been one of the most exciting educational events I’ve attended for a long time. Have a listen and let me know if you agree.

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I had a bit of bother with this one. I’ve not used keynote much, but it was very easy to create a presentation with. While playing about with it I noticed you could record an audio soundtrack very easily and though I’d do that, export to quicktime or even youtube to let folk see what I’ve been talking about (and to play with the toys). Recording was easy enough, but when I came to export I got errors every time. A quick google fould more folk with the same problem and fixes for keynote 3 & 3, unfortunately I was using keynote 4 and the fixes didn’t work for me. I am guessing the problem has something to do with combining a recorded audio with movies and audio in the presentation. So what should have been a few minutes work turned into a few hours! I exported the presentation to jpgs, then I dug into the presentation package and found the narration audio. Next I imported the into GarageBand and one by one placed the images on the podcast track, adding urls as I went.

Next I exported the podcast to iWeb and published it, the first time I had used iWeb and again it seems easy enough to use without having to read a manual.

anyway here is a version of the presentation as an enhanced podcast.

As a by-product I now have a Podcast. I will not be adding to it very often, but I’ve got some audio from TeachMeet07 which I’ll publish soon. I didn’t manage to record all the presentations, but I’ve got some.

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I’ve been a lot slower off the mark getting my class blogging this session, by this time last year we had several posts on the otter’s blog. My class this session are a little different, bigger and it will take longer to organise them into practised bloggers. I am hoping that my class from last session will continue to blog with their new teacher and they and Skippy have made a start.

So I’ve started tidying up the blogs a little, the Primary Six SJ blog has become the Primary Seven S one, and I’ve just added an interesting blog to the children’s side bar: Al Upton and the miniLegends. If you are running a class blog that children write on and would like some sort of informal connection to our guys, let me know and I’ll add a link. I’ve not started checking links and testing to see if our blog friends are blocked yet but that will need t obe done before the children get going.

I am also beginning to think of the links we hope to make this year along with strengthening some loose bonds. I hope to join the Mothership at some point. Our peripatetic music teacher has spoken to me about learning GarageBand so I hope he can help me improve the sound of Radio Sandaig, I’ve also joined Voices Of The World an interesting looking podcast project organised by Sharon Tonner. I a mlooking forward to finding out what sort of tasks the project will set, the fact they are going to be about producing one or two minutes of audio makes them very doable.

Blogged from tm

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On Thursday I went over for a holiday visit to Lourdes Secondary School to visit Lori Ramsay. At the last Glasgow Masterclass meeting Lori had presented a tantalising view of The Mothership which seemed to involve enterprise, podcasting and music. Wendy from Edict invited me to get in touch with Lori to find out more and I popped over to the southside of the city on Thursday morning.

Lori met me and took me to a music classroom full of macs, keyboards and other musical gear. She booted up one of the few macs in Glasgow City Schools and launched into a garageband lesson! This was great, I’ve steered clear of GarageBand except for the occasional voice and background podcast as I have the musical ear of a turnip.

Lori quickly showed me how to teach children to put together a short song or jingle, first blocking out drums, then rhythm and synth followed by some instruments, until we had a wall of sound ‘blocks’. She then knocked holes in the wall to create an intro, verse and chorus. This would be broken down into several lessons in class, but you could really see how excited the children would be. Lori gave me quite a few bit of essential information that a musical person would understand and that I can follow. I an now ready to teach some music watch out for the effect on Radio Sandaig!

Lori explained that she was not a teacher, although she teaches sound engineering at Lourdes, she has a professional sound engineering background. She brings the real world into the classroom using the enterprise model. The pupils learn radio production and sound recording skills at SQA Int 2 Higher and Advanced Higher levels. I m sure that the string of backstage passes hanging on the wall and working with an expert from the real world wil ladd to the positive effect of working on a ‘real’ task.

Sound Studio Lourdes Secondary School

Next Lori took me through a well equipped music studio to a soundproof room where the music could be edited and Radio Shows created. We listen to some of the children’s work. It was immediately apparent that the sound quality was much better than you usually find in a school podcast. We listened to professional sounding music, intros and voiceovers the pupils organising and running the shows. Some of the music was produced by the pupils and some by independent musicians. I was surprised to find that the children produce not podcasts but streaming audio. This is wrapped up in copyright issues, the station plays music from up and coming bands. I asked how they got the music expecting that they would be pulling it from music sharing sites, Lori pointer to a huge pile of CDs these were sent in by aspiring bands to play on the show.

Lori told me the pupils organised a event at the Garage night-club in Glasgow. The show included signed and unsigned bands including some musicians from the school. A & R folk from major record companies turned up. Undoubtedly this has had a real effect on the pupils involved, Lori mentions the positive effect on their attitude and that they are learning real world skills as they gain academic success. The program has a neat fit with the Curriculum for Excellence as well as enterprise.

Next we went online to take a look at the The Mothership.

The first function of the site is the streaming radio station where you can listen to the pupils productions, pupils from 4 Glasgow Secondary schools and one primary are involved:

Central to The Mothership project is the production and streaming of radio shows created by the students in a real professional studio environment. The studio, based at Lourdes Secondary School is available to students on allocated ?studio nights…

Plans are afoot to expand the number of schools involved.
As well as the music section of the site there is a password protected, secure section as well. This allows pupils to log on and download learning resources or take quizzes on the site. There are also chat rooms which are opened by teachers to help with homework and pre-exam revision. The site is still under development but plans are that pupils will have alien style avatars which they will be able to customise as the gain points through completing learning activities. Lori explained that the design of the site was reviewed by the pupils whose feedback has enabled the web designers to produce what the pupils wanted.

There is an interview of lori on her work on the Bluesbunny Independent Music Reviews Site : Mothership Project

Overall the Mothership project is very impressive, hitting academic, enterprise and Curriculum for Excellence targets. I am looking to taking Sandaig’s broadcasting, audio and video, to a more formal enterprise model this session and hope to get on board.