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Podcasting: A Newbie Finds His Radio Voice

Another week, another Web 2.0 tool that I haven't used before. I have certainly heard of podcasting but never created one previously and never even listened to one prior to the start of this course. That's OK, I read somewhere that keeping your brain active by learning new things will pay off big time when I'm older...


The Process of Learning About Podcasting

Podcasting is huge and thus there are many sources available to introduce, explain, and help one get started. I started by reading the Podcasting section in Richardson's book (Chapter 8) which again gives a fairly good introduction to podcasting. Basically, a podcast is a voice recording that gets put on the web for everyone to listen to. I recommend a great article titled "Simplifying Podcasting" (Pandy, 2009) that offers everything you need to know if you are new to podcasting. This one is especially geared toward teachers and would make a great guide for implementing podcasting in your teaching and learning practices.

Beyond the readings, I used GarageBand's video tutorial in conjunction with readings from Nardo (2009) and Shamburg (2009) to help me start creating my podcast. My first podcast was for my family (and thus not available to those viewing this blog), as it contained copyright material that I can't put on the web. I ended up taking one of my daughters favourite bedtime stories and put it in a podcast complete with pictures and sound effects! My family was impressed. This "practice" podcast allowed me to play around with laying voice tracks, adding photos from iPhoto, and also adding sound effects from the GarageBand library. All three of these tasks were done separately and then combined together for the finished product. I especially liked the join feature that combined all the separate voice tracks into one. The entire process was frustrating at times, but also very cool. What made my practice podcast easy what that the story was "scripted" and I basically had to read what was on the page.

The podcast you can view was not scripted, comes complete with photos and a few sound effects. I hope you find it interesting!

http://web.me.com/mvmacau/Site/Podcast/Entries/2010/2/23_My_Favorite_Holiday.html



For this podcast, I spoke off the cuff and shared information as if I was chatting with a friend. I wanted to come across as speaking rather than reading which I hope will seem more natural to my audience.


My Personal Learning

Personally, podcasting has shown me another way to communicate with family and friends. While away from family and friends, email and skype have been my typical modes of communication. Email is great because of its asynchronous nature, skype is great because you can see and hear the person you are talking to. Can a podcast do anything that these two can't? I believe so. The one great aspect of a podcast is its downloadability. If I found myself away from my daughters for example, a podcast will provided them with a message (possibly with pictures or video) that they can view over and over if they choose. My message is also portable so that they can take it with them (if they have an iPod or MP3). This would come in handy if they miss me really late at night!

As a learner, I was happy to create my podcast using GarageBand. I really wanted to use an application I already had on my computer, as opposed to downloading one from the web. While Audacity is a popular application, I like GarageBand better because of the ability to seamlessly add photos or video from iPhoto and iMovie respectfully. GarageBand also provides numerous sound effects that I can use whereas if using Audacity I would need to import sound effects. While the professional setup and appearance of GarageBand appears daunting, I found it to be very user friendly once I spent some time playing with the tool. If I can learn to use this tool, anyone with basic of computer skills can too. The entire experience left me with a sense of accomplishment and pride considering my limited yet developing technological abilities.


Podcasting and Teaching & Learning

In an educational context, iPods offer a variety of opportunities to improve teaching and learning in the classroom. The one salient point here is that most middle school and high school students already own an iPod or a MP3 player thus they are learning with something they understand. As Pandy points out in her article, "Young people want hands on experience, interaction, identity in cyberculture, and connectivity with the world".(P. 251) I believe an iPod can provide all of these things. Some examples of possible uses of iPods include:

1. Administering oral exams
2. Providing extra help to ESL students and those with learning difficulties; students could replay information over and over
3. Increasing face time between students and teachers; as classes get bigger and teachers get busier, podcasts can supplement instruction in and out of the classroom (Mears, 2009, P.1) For example, if a lesson takes up an entire period, a podcast can contain all the information that the teacher did not have time to share: announcements, assignment due dates, quiz reminders, study tips, homework etc.
4. Students can display their knowledge and skills via musical stories, interviews, performances, and compositions (to name a few)

As a physical education teacher and a coach, I started thinking about practical uses in regard to PE and athletics. My last school didn't have many facilities nearby so the students and I often spent 5-10 minutes traveling to and from various arenas, swimming pools etc. This down time could easily and productively be used to introduce a lesson, announce teams, discuss rules and procedures, all via a podcast. For athletic teams, travel time is often longer thus even more information could be provided in a podcast. This could include photos, diagrams and even video that could help prepare for the upcoming game.


Conclusion

Considering more and more schools expect teachers to integrate technology into their teaching, why not use a technology most students are already familiar with? Students that are active and engaged will learn more and I believe podcasting is a great way to improve teaching and learning.


References

GarageBand Tutorial, iLife 2009. Retrieved from http://www.apple.com/ilife/tutorials/#garageband-intro

Mears, Derrick. (2009) Podcasts and Wiki's: Delivering Content Information to Students Using Technology. Strategies. Reston: Sep/Oct 2009. Vol. 23, Iss. 1, p. 29-34

Nardo, Rachel. (2009) See! Hear! Enhanced Podcasting With GarageBand. General Music Today, v.23, n1, p.27-30

Pandy, Prachi P. (2009) Simplifying Podcasting. International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. Vol. 20, No. 2, P. 251-261

Richardson, Will. (2009) Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and OtherPowerful Web Tools for Classrooms. Corwin Press

Sahmburg, Christopher. (2009) Student-Powered Podcasting. International Society for Technology in Education. Washington, DC. www.iste.org

Delicious... and fat free!

Another week and another web tool to learn about; my adventures in web 2.0 tools for education continue. This weeks topic is Social Bookmarking and I hate to sound like a broken record but I have to admit that I haven't used nor even heard of social bookmarking prior to undertaking this assignment.

Considering what I've learned this past week, I've been missing out on a very useful tool. The concept is similar to bookmarking on one's own computer with some powerful extras. First, bookmarks travel with me where ever I go, as long as I have access to the internet. This is possible only after joining a bookmarking site such as Delicious or Diigo (more about them later). In the past I did bookmark the occasional site but this information was stored only on the computer I was using and thus this data was not always available to me.

Secondly, I can organize my bookmarks any way I like as I can assign a "tag" (description) to each link that will help me find the link at a later date. If I end up bookmarking hundreds of sites, the use of tags can help me quickly search for specific themes or topics.

Lastly, I can search the entire Delicious site for links by looking at what others have bookmarked using the same tag. For example, if I search the site for all links that have been tagged with "Web 2.0", I can see what others have bookmarked using this tag. Thus, I can perform a search within Delicious as opposed to using a search engine such as Google.




The Learning Process

There is a massive amount of information available on the topic of social bookmarking; my eyes are still sore from all of the reading and viewing while researching. I started with Chapter 6 - The Social Web in Will Richardson's text. This offered a fairly good introduction to the concept of Social Bookmarking although he only discusses the two more popular sites available on the web. A great introduction to the topic can be found in the common craft website under the title "Social Bookmarking in Plain English". The social bookmarking sites themselves offer tutorials and I especially liked the "how-to-guide" and "learn more" videos in Diigo; great stuff. YouTube offered some worthwhile videos that provided information about "getting started" and "how to" as well.

Considering I was a complete novice a week and a half ago, I feel that Social Bookmarking was easier to learn and effectively use than the other tools I've had to learn. The concept is simple and straight-forward with the added extras of tagging, using groups, and sharing being easy to set up and use. I can see myself using this tool regularly now that I understand the many possibilities available to me.




My Personal Learning

Prior to starting my research, I checked to see how many bookmarks I had on my desktop. I found forty-four and I can't remember the last time I even referred to one of them! I laughed at this and I asked myself if I had been wasting my time bookmarking. To be honest, I probably never even thought about my bookmarks and probably did a Google search instead.

I couldn't choose between Delicious and Diigo from the readings and tutorials so I decided to open an account with each. Creating an account was easy and straight-forward for both. I spent about the same amount of time with both and bookmarked the same sites just to be fair. This process was very easy once Delicious and Diigo were added to my tool bar (it's easy and I recommend it).

While both sites offer access to huge amounts of information, the ability to use a filter makes the search for information quite a bit easier. When I searched Delicious using the tag "social bookmarking" I had 10,677 results. When I added "web2.0", and "education" as filters, the number of results dropped down to a somewhat more manageable 230 results. This is a great option and makes searching so much easier.

Considering that these two sites are the most popular ones, I really wanted to join both so that I could share and search with the largest group of people possible. However, I do not really want to keep two accounts running and up to date for this purpose. Thankfully Diigo allowed me to "link to Del.icio.us" so that whatever I bookmark in Diigo will automatically be bookmarked in Del.icio.us. VERY helpful!

Overall, I liked the "look" and "set-up" of Diigo better even though both do primarily the same things. Diigo however also allows for highlighting, sticky notes and screenshots of websites (no more broken links) which are useful tools that I would even use, especially when sharing links within a group. Considering some links of articles or blogs could have multiple pages of information, highlighting or using sticky notes will allow me to quickly point out the important bits of information.

I have started using Diigo to organize the web 2.0 links that are mentioned in the readings, and by the participants in my class. There have been many, many great ones and I really want to keep track of them all and revisit them when needed. By using tags, I will have a large, easy to search data base of information on various topics by the end of this course.

My wife has also taken an interest in Diigo. While working on my laptop in bed (and ignoring her completely) she peered over my shoulder and started asking some questions. This tool was new to her as well yet after a brief explanation, she told me that she was going to sign up for Diigo and use it at work!


Social Bookmarking and Professional Learning

Other than the "bookmarking" aspect of this web tool, I see social bookmarking as a great way to "share" information with professional colleagues. I envision a group of teachers (i.e Math) that teach the same courses and use common evaluation tools. While this is common in many schools, how much sharing of tips, best practices etc. is going on amongst these teachers? The amount of sharing will vary but I can see the huge potential of using Diigo or Delicious in this regard. Sharing would not only take place amongst this small group but could also take place amongst math teachers from all over just by searching the Diigo site with the use of tags. In fact, this may become a preferred search method considering the information has been tagged by like-minded teachers and not some computer search program. Another bonus is that this method of sharing is asynchronous, which is great for busy teachers who probably don't have the time to regularly sit down together as a group.

For students, I can see potential uses as well. First, websites or blogs that offer "study tips" or help with "essay writing" would be great to bookmark and refer to when needed. This information can also be shared amongst a study group and this group could end up putting together quite the collection of resources. Secondly, bookmarks can be packaged very nicely into a slide show (when using Diigo) which would certainly look very professional indeed!

There are a few negatives (small ones) that I can find if using this tool in a personal or professional way. First, you have to join a bookmarking site. Some people may not want another account to manage or they may not want to give out personal information required during registration. Secondly, information overload is a potential problem. As I mentioned earlier, searching using the tag "social bookmarking" provided over 10,000 results. If a person does not understand the filtering process, this number could discourage them before they even start. Even when I used the filter tool, I still had 230 results. That is still a lot of bookmarks to review!

Overall, I enjoyed learning about Social Bookmarking and I see it as a powerful tool that I will use for both personally and professionally.






References

Annotate, Archive, Organize. Retrieved from http://www.diigo.com/learn_more

Beutler, Marty. Del.icio.us Demo. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGXElviSRXM

Davis, Liz. Getting Started With Del.icio.us. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGXElviSRXM

Richardson, Will (2009). Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. Corwin Press.

Social Bookmarking in Plain English. Retrieved from http://www.commoncraft.com/bookmarking-plain-english

Teaching Today: Social Bookmarking. Retrieved from http://trailfire.com/joannedegroot/marks/199326

YouTube?? Me Tube Too!

The world is your oyster may be a cliche, but using the web to publish video of ______(place exciting topic in the space) is an easy way to make your creation available to an unlimited audience. I have to be honest and say right off the bat that I have never uploaded video anywhere on the web before but I am certainly aware of how popular it has become, primarily because of YouTube. How popular is YouTube? During my research, I watched a video clip of a presentation given by anthropologist Michael Wesch and he stated that YouTube creates more content in six months than the big three US networks have created in sixty years! That is shocking! As this this particular tool is popular with so many young people (and older people as well), teachers would be amiss to not incorporate it into their classroom in some way.


The Learning Process

Reading, reading, more reading and a little playing; that pretty much sums up my learning process. Will Richardson's text offered a short introduction to video publishing in Chapter 8 but I wanted to gather information from a few more sources to get a decent grasp on the topic.
I logged into my Ning Classroom 2.0 group to have a look around. A great site and a great group if you haven't read enough yet (I know... we've all read plenty) on just about every topic related to Web 2.0. Two sources caught my eye and broadened my knowledge base considerably. The first was an article by Janko Roettgers called "The Decade in Online Video, Part 1: The Early Years" which carries onto "Part 2: Time to Upload". Both parts give a great review of the evolution of video on the web and what amazed me is how far video on the web has come in a fairly short period of time. Look out traditional TV, you are under attack!

The second source I thought was very useful was Dr. Helen Barrett's "How to Create Simple Digital Stories". Her page outlines the entire process from beginning to end for both Mac and PC users. A great resource that I think would work well in schools for those teachers and students just learning about video publishing. I used this page to publish a very short video with this blog.

What I also found was the large number of video sharing sites that are available to post ones video clips. Other than YouTube you can also post video with these sites: Yahoo video, View4View.com, Zudeo.com, vuze.com, lulu.com, digg.com, and Google video. The world really can be your oyster.


Personal Learning

Regarding personal learning, there were two different types for me. The first was actually taking some raw video (.MPG) and using Quick time to create a short clip that I could post on this blog. The topic of my short video is not related to education however I just wanted to acquire content and practice uploading it to the web. I used Barrett's guide as well as tutorials on my laptop to create my amazingly awesome video clip (I'm sure you will agree!) I now feel somewhat knowledgeable with this tool and I feel certain that I can now upload video onto YouTube or TeacherTube if needed.

The second type of personal learning came via YouTube. I have watched videos on YouTube before but I must say that most have been of the funny, ha-ha genre and few have been highly educational. As I haven't really searched through YouTube before, I was excited to find an unlimited supply of useful, educational videos. I enjoy DIY projects around the house and although I am quite handy, sometimes I need some guidance. I hung a few doors recently and I did use some resources on the web, but they were text based with photos. While this information was helpful, I believe YouTube would have been better. I am kicking myself now for not thinking about a video tutorial, considering YouTube has many videos explaining how to "hang a door". Next project I undertake I will definitely check out YouTube!


Teaching and Learning With Video Publishing


Wow, where to start. I mean the possibilities are endless. Just by looking through YouTube and TeacherTube, I realize video publishing is a great way for teachers to add to their basket of skills. Portions or entire parts of a lesson could be uploaded to a blog or a video sharing site for students to access if they need to review or were away from class. It is also a great way for students to demonstrate what they know. Most teens already have a phone or iPod that can shoot video, so instead of threatening them with ??? if they use it during class time, why not make them use to create a video showing what they have learned and then publish it to the web?

My mind has been swirling with possibilities. Regarding PE, there were an number of interesting videos on TeacherTube that I would consider using in class or just review on my own in order to brush up on my knowledge. Topics included "How to Spike a Volleyball" and multiple videos existed describing various ways to use Heart Rate Monitors in class. All useful stuff and it's free! The best part is I can access it from anywhere at anytime as long as I have access to my laptop and the internet.
Off the top of my head, I thought of possibilities within my own classes. As PE is a movement class (primarily) video would be a great way to observe a large group of people at the same time. It would also be an effective way to observe an individuals movement during class as well. From a teaching standpoint, video would make evaluation easier and less subjective.

From a students standpoint, watching video of ones owns performance would be a great way to get some feedback (formative); a picture (or video) is worth a thousand words. Students could also be given the task of taking video of their classmates and then provide them with a peer assessment of their performance. Those that prefer not to critique others could perform a self-assessment instead.

Bottom line for me is that video is a great tool to use in the classroom. I have learned something new that I can incorporate into my teaching immediately and that gets me excited. The possibilities are endless.

A short note about my attached video clip. I had to purchase additional software for my Mac in order to view the downloaded .MPG file, however I couldn't get any sound!? Please let me know if you have the same problem or if it works for you. If it doesn't, please open with VLC (an open source media player that is free to download on the web) and that should do the trick.




References

Barrett, Helen (2009). How to Create Simple Digital Stories. Retrieved from http://electronicportfolios.com/digistory/howto.html

Richardson, Will (2009). Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. Corwin Press.

Roettgers, Janko (2010). The Decade in Online Video, Part 1: The Early Years. Retrieved from http://newteevee.com/2010/01/01/the-decade-in-online-video-part-1-the-early-years/

Wesch, Michael (2008). An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube. Retrieved from http://trailfire.com/joannedegroot/marks/232909

Yeah... I can Flickr

Ten days ago I didn't really know anything about Flickr or photo sharing on the web. The reading, viewing, and playing have definitely brought me up to speed with Flickr. In this blog post I will share with you what I have learned about Flickr.

Reflections on the Learning Process

I chose to use Flickr over other photo sharing sites as I use iPhoto to store my photos and there is a link to Flickr included with this program. As I mentioned, I'm new to this tool although I have been invited to view other peoples photos on sites such as Picasso. I started the learning process by reading Chapter 7 in Will Richardson's book titled "Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful tools for Classrooms". This chapter was an easy read and it provided a great introduction to Flickr. Richardson also mentioned a very useful link to a presentation by Alan Levine called "What Can We Do With Flickr?" (http://tinyurl.com/2kly3j) These two sources provided me with a good understanding of Flickr and its potential uses and allowed me to get started straight away with less apprehension than if I had just jumped in cold.

The start was simple enough as I chose some photos and clicked the Flickr icon and my photos quickly transferred for me. I had to set up an account but that wasn't difficult either. My first group of photos were imported into Flickr but I really didn't do much with them. I didn't use the "tag" option as I really didn't understand the concept of tagging. I was just happy to be able to share the photos with members of my family. Playing around with the different aspects of Flickr was the best way to learn the basics and create some small albums.

In future additions to my album, I added descriptions to some photos as well as used the "tag" and "map" options. I really liked adding descriptions as I think they made the photos more meaningful. The map option was also interesting as now anyone (I choose) can see where a particular photo was taken. I showed this option to my daughter and her response was "cool". Positive feedback if I ever heard it.

I now consider myself an informed user, beyond novice but certainly not an advanced user. There are still some aspects I want to learn about such as annotations but more research and practice are needed before I can incorporate this option into my photos.

Overall, I enjoyed learning about Flickr and plan to use it regularly now. I only wish I had learned about it earlier.


Implications to My Personal Learning

The first thing that popped into my mind when learning about Flickr was that it was "so easy" to share photos. My family and my wife's family are scattered all over so it hasn't been easy to share large numbers of photos with them. Email limits the number and quality of photos one can send and even posts to my travel blog had limited space for photos. This has been a problem for me in the past as I had so many photos to share yet the tools I used to share them were very limited. Flickr solves this dilemma for me. I will no longer have to search for one or two of the best photos and then attach or upload them (this can be slow) to an email or to a blog post. I now can choose large numbers of photos and upload them (easily and quickly) to Flickr and I'm done. Flickr even contacts those who I want to see my photos via email. Nice. Socially, by using Flickr, I will certainly be sharing more photos with my family as well as sharing with them more often.

As Flickr is so easy to use, it made me think of the varying possibilities for its use. My daughter has been watching my progress off and on and I think this would be a great tool for her to use. She has many friends overseas and sharing of photos with them would be more interesting than an email message I believe. Many people enjoy looking at photos and as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words...


Implications For Professional Learning

Socially, Flickr is awesome. But it certainly also got me thinking about implications for teaching and learning in my classroom. As I teach Physical Education, incorporating technology into my classes may pose more of a challenge but I still think there are a number of potential uses. Considering technology integration is popular in many schools, it is only natural that teachers look for ways to improve teaching and learning via technology.

For me, having students demonstrate what they know is not always easy. Most often I am dependent on observations of my students (moving, interacting, helping, sharing, cooperating etc.) in order to determine what they know or don't know. I can see Flickr as a great tool that would allow students to show me what they know. For example, a group of students are participating in a unit of badminton. They learn the following: racquet grip, various stances (serving, receiving etc.), various shots, positioning, rules & procedures, and tactics. If the class has a large number of students, my observation time may be limited. What if students worked in pairs and took photos to demonstrate their knowledge? They could create an album of photos that could show things such as grip, stance, positioning, tactics etc. This album would not only be available to the teacher but to the other students as well. As most students enjoy using the computer and sharing photos with friends, this should be an easy yet different way to demonstrate their knowledge. I will have to try it some time!

The positives are obvious but are their negatives to this kind of learning? Tough question. I certainly see some potential obstacles. First, are there school/district guidelines regarding student images/work on the web for everyone to see. Are the resources available for this to work? Do students have the basic skills and knowledge required? Is this type of evaluation doable in a short period of time? Some interesting questions to think about and many I can't answer right now. I suspect some trial and error work will need to be undertaken before I get all my answers.

Overall, I enjoyed my time learning about and exploring within Flickr. The potential uses are amazing and it is a tool I can see myself using both personally and professionally in the future.

Web 2.0 Whirlpool

Well it has been an interesting couple of weeks. So many new and interesting tools to learn and understand it is overwhelming. Here is a quick summary:
1) Facebook: I never knew I had so many friends!! It has been great hearing from friends overseas via this site.
2) Google Reader: Great way to keep up with blogs, websites etc all in one place. Watch out what you sign up for; I skimmed and scanned 527 articles the other day!
3) Twitter: Interesting social networking site that I am still learning to utilize. Amazingly I have six people following my tweets!
4) Ning: Joined a Classroom 2.0 Ning that offers access to huge amounts of information related to web tools. Unfortunately I haven't had time to fully utilize this site yet.

There is so much swirling around me right now that it does feel like a whirlpool; I'm being slowly sucked in. Fortunately my head is above water and I'm still smiling.

Introduction

Hi everyone. My name is Mel Varga and I am currently studying at the University of Alberta. The course is called EDES 501/544 and it focuses on a variety of Web 2.0 tools for teachers and librarians. The purpose of this blog is to share my thoughts about various web 2.0 tools that I am using and exploring with. Some I have used before (blogs) but others I have not (facebook, twitter).
Professionally, I have been (and still am) a teacher for the past fourteen years but I have been ready to change things up a bit career-wise. I spent the last two years teaching overseas in Macau, China and now I am pursuing a Masters degree in order to challenge myself, improve my skills, and hopefully create new and different job opportunities.
Why this class? I see technology as an ever-important and integral part to education and I want to be knowledgeable about new tools that I can use in the classroom. I'm not sure what to expect but I'm certain that I will learn something useful from the web tools and my classmates in this course.