Podcasting Practicalities

I've been learning, over the course of the year, how to get podcasts together in a most expeditious and usable-for-students manner. I am not sure how practical all the steps are, but it seems to be what works best for me. Use the steps or suggest changes, I'm open to making the process more streamlined.

Garageband '08
I use Garageband since it is a very easy product for my students and I. I have taught grades four through eight how to use Garageband this year and they love it.

Once the recording is complete and I edit it for little mistakes, I am ready to export it as an AIF file. Why, you ask? Because I found a program called Levelator. It levels out the audio from one speaker to the next in a podcast.

Some students speak soft, others loud, so this evens everything out. The Levelator requires a WAV or AIF file, so this extra step becomes necessary.

Levelator
It couldn't be a simplier program to use. Drag and drop a file onto the interface's little black rectangle and it places a new file with a .output extension in the folder with your original file.

Open the File in iTunes
I open the file in iTunes and get ready to jump through another hoop. This one involves choosing the file and selecting from the menu Advanced - Convert Selection to AAC. This gives me a .m4a file. I ran into headaches with this earlier in the year when I was creating math review podcasts for my students. Not every student could play that file type at home. So... on to the next hoop.

Upload the file to Zamzar and Convert
It seem like everyone can play .mp3 files. I use Zamzar because it is free and quick. I do use the website a fair amount, so I did make a donation to them a while back. I also received a very nice thank you email from them. I find my .m4a file on my hard drive, choose to convert to .mp3 and supply my email address. A short while later, a link appears to my new .mp3 file. It disappears in one day, so I try to complete this step when I'm not pressed for time.

Upload the File to Podomatic
I'm in the clear at this point. I started a Podomatic account earlier this year. Again, free is good. I have 500MB of storage and I'm only at about 12% capacity after a year's worth of work. I am contemplating going pro for the better statistics and ad-free page.

When I started the account, I created an RSS feed to the page. My students can access all the podcasts by typing SMS Computer at the iTunes store.

For Those Without iTunes
With the end firmly in site, I make a link to the podcasts on my classroom wiki. I have a link to the classroom wiki on my Schoolnotes page. The students are usually very good at finding the Schoolnotes page since almost every teacher keeps one for homework assignments.

So There You Have It
A lot of steps, that may seem redundant, but it is working for me. I also end up with three ways that the students can find the files.

Any thoughts?

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Image Citation
Chan, Kelly. "iPod gathering." nikitac's photostream. 2005 Oct 28. 2008 June 2.
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/30/56898961_fa5b5d2f30.jpg?v=0

Cell Phones as Learning Tools

I took quite a while to listen to the K12 Online presentation Cell Phones as Classroom Learning Tools. I wasn't going to listen to it initially. At our school, cell phones are supposed to stay in backpacks and are to be turned off. Boy, am I glad I listened.

A lot of what was presented will work for me personally. I really did not think much about using a phone outside of what I saw in the Pay Attention video by Darren Draper. The video suggests challenging students to find data to several questions via the cell phone. By the way, I only realized recently that he created that presentation through a Twitter that he posted.

I have had my math and computer students record songs and public service announcements on various topics. It is hard to get a good recording with the sounds of the classroom in the background. One of her ideas was to use the cell phone as a recording tool. The links to the tools are on her wiki. It doesn't even have to be a cell phone, it can be a land line. I may use this in the future.

Another idea that intrigues me is to record ring tones for a cell phone. The ring tone can be a song a student creates. This would tie in nicely to the metric songs my math students create. Liz also has an idea for creating wall paper for the cell phone. This would be a neat tie in to learning to create images using The Gimp.

Finally, more as a tool to create content for parents and students are two last ideas. The first is the idea of using a website that allow a person to create a mobile phone viewable site. Imagine how neat it would be to have a little site for downloading those wall papers and ring tones. The second is the ability to post homework and assignment alerts. I already use Schoolnotes to post homework. It would be neat to have parents to sign up for alerts.

There were some pointed comments on the K12 Online about the cost of using the Internet with cell phones. I agree with this. I had my links to the Internet cut off on my phone because I don't want to pay the extra money and I was tired of clicking into the option by mistake. I also agree that students often use texting and Internet connections without regard to what it costs their parents. Tied into a math lesson, it would make a powerful real life connection to their lessons.

Great job on the presentation and I am glad that K12 Online makes it easy to go back to again and again. I had it on my iPod and it was great "pick up" listening while waiting at the tire repair shop and waiting to pick up the kids from after school activities. I plan on eventually posting my results of each tool as I try it. I highly recommend the presentation.

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Image Citation:
"Cell Phone vs. Cell Phone.” Yankee in Texas' Photostream. 22 Sep 2007. 3 Nov 2007. http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1234/1426682842_48bdec4176_m.jpg