Tips for Creating Audio for Multimedia Projects
I’ve been assigning multimedia projects for students for years, and I’m always pleasantly surprised with what my students give me. With absolutely no training, they have managed to present some pretty exciting projects that include audio, video, photos and various other types of media. They have used wikis, blogs, webpages, Google Sites and even Web 2.0 tools to display their masterpieces. And I’ve provided little to no training, just suggestions for tools to use. I’m rarely disappointed.
This semester, however, I thought I’d raise the bar a little and provide a little training in the form of short videos introducing a tool and briefly showing them how to use it. I’m curious to see if more students will choose to use the tools and thus produce even better multimedia projects. Well, we’ll see. Projects are due on Sunday. Below is one of the short videos I created for them to introduce using audio in their projects. I introduce Audacity, AudioPal, AudioBoo and iPadio.
Audacity 
Audacity is free, open source software for recording and editing sounds. It is available for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems.
More Audio Podcasting Tools
- AudioBoo is a mobile & web platform that effortlessly allows you to record and upload audio for your students or the rest of the world to hear.
- ipadio allows you to broadcast from any phone to the Internet live. Phone blog, collect audio data, record and update the world, or simply let your mates know what you’re doing – ipadio is integrated with Social Media & Blogging platforms.
- AudioPal: anyone with a personal website or blog can easily add audio to their site. Engage your visitors by creating an instantly interactive website using AudioPal. Just create your message and embed your flash audio player.
Digging in Diigo for Inspiration
It’s only the 2nd day of NaBloPoMo and I’m already having trouble finding inspiration for blog posts. To help give me some ideas on what to share with you, I decided to visit Diigo. This is where I stash anything that I find of interest that I hope to visit again soon. There is a ton of stuff in there, and I have to admit, I do more stashing than I do revisiting the content. Some day. Well, today is that day apparently.
As I sit here and reflect on my usage of Diigo as an archival service for my interests, I’m feeling that sharing with you about how I use it might be as beneficial as sharing what I have there. Let’s focus on the former. I switch over from Delicious to Diigo a couple of years ago after I saw what @rrodrigo was doing with it, and Delicious had just been bought out by Yahoo! I felt that my “brain” was being messed with, so I needed to switch to a safer place that wasn’t going to disappear on me. Diigo was the choice, mostly for the added features over what Delicious was offering.
I had started using social bookmarking in my ENG102 research paper writing class, and I desperately needed an easier way to group students together by class and have them engage with each other online over their shared research projects. This was cumbersome in Delicious, but proved to be a breeze in Diigo, as Diigo has Groups, and is set up for teachers to easily add students and organize them in these groups. I was in heaven after I discovered this. But the best features that really sold me on Diigo were the annotation tools. I love that my students can highlight sections of a web page and make notes. They can comment on pages that have been saved and “Like” links that have been saved. And we can even have a discussion forum right in the middle of it all. It’s truly awesome for shared research assignments.
My students love it because it’s easy to use. They have lots of tools to make Diigo easy to use. They include Bookmarklets and browser addons. Students were able to simple drag the Diigolet up to their Bookmarks Toolbar. And there are tons of mobile apps and Web Services. My favorite is Save to delicious, which automatically cross-posts to your delicious account. I couldn’t just abandon Delicious. We go way back.
I also use Diigo as part of my Personal Learning Network (PLN). I’ve subscribed to groups and even created a group for CyberSalonAZ. One group that I’ve found great resources in is Diigo In Education. Once you subscribe to a group, you can select to get daily updates on new content via email. It’s easy to keep up with the posts when they come to email. You can also choose to have no email or maybe a weekly update. You should all join our CyberSalonAZ Diigo group and start sharing. See below for joining and seeing what we’ve saved recently.
Diigo Image from http://www.customicondesign.com
Why WordPress is Better than Blackboard (Video)
So I’ve been writing about my escape from Blackboard to WordPress for my online course management system. Some people were wondering what this looks like. I can’t just give you the link because the classes are live and are in locked down mode (private), so I create a screencast so you can see an what an online course in WordPress might look like. I also talk about the feature I like best in comparison to Bb.
Podcasting By Phone with Gabcast & iPadio
I posted this on my podcasting blog almost 3 years ago. I’m doing a presentation tomorrow on enhancing courses with audio and thought I would revisit gabcast and take a look at iPadio. Check it out.
I attended the TechEd ‘07 conference in Ontario last week and podcasting was all the rage. Most sessions were standing room only. I tried to squeeze in as many as I could get into in the three days I was there just so I could learn something new. Most of the presentation were good, but there wasn’t much new information offered up for the experienced podcaster. I was lucky enough however to wander into a presentation on the last day that introduced me to a great podcasting tool: Gabcast. The website below does a great job of describing Gabcast:
Gabcast Podcasting By Phone Or VoIP – VoIP Sol
If you’ve caught the bug for podcasting and can produce enough chatter to publish your own audio content online, Gabcast will host your files for you for free. Once you post audio content either using a regular phone or a VoIP service, you can access the audio files from your website or weblog (Blogger, TypePad, WordPress, and more). The Gabcast service can also be used to host conference calls (VoIP Sol).
I can think of many ways to use this service. The presenter set up a podcast for the attendees to call in and leave feedback from the presentation. She had one of us call in during the presentation to demonstrate how easy it is use. The called showed up immediately on her site. Example below:
iPadio is a similar service, but includes an app you can use on the iPhone and Android phones as well. Here is what it looks like.
Schedule Student Conferences with TimeDriver
Every semester I schedule conferences with all my students to talk about their final papers before they start to finalize the paper. I was always a pain trying to schedule these 60+ conferences with students until I found TimeDriver. Watch how I use TimeDrive to schedule student conference fast and easily.
Mobile Learning Takes Shape in ENG101
I’m about one semester away from teaching a fully mobilized ENG101 course. What do I mean by a mobilize course and mobile learning? Mobile learning is learning that happens when the learner takes advantage of the learning opportunities offered by mobile technologies. Mobile gadgets are everywhere, and just about every student has a mobile phone in his/her pocket. Why not take advantage of these learning tools, as like to refer to them?
So this semester I introduced a mobile learning opportunity to my students in the ENG101 class. I created content that could be viewed, read, watched and listened to on a mobile device. Then I created this video to tell students about it. How they take advantage of what I’ve created and to what extent is yet to be seen.
New FAQ Avatar for my Online Students
I’ve been playing around with SitePal for a year and a half now. I love the idea of having an avatar for students to interact with, but it has proven to be a bit time consuming and expensive. My initial investment was a cool $99 to get five avatars and scenes with 1 minute of audio each (Bronze). One minute is not a lot of time and during the first year I had a hard time keeping to the limit, so I ended up neglecting my avatar, dubbed Associate Professor Sam.
But instead of giving up completely on the idea, I decided to invest a bit more money into it and see if I could make it work. Initially the lowest SitePal plan costs $99 but didn’t include Text to Speech (TTS). That is how I make Sam talk to my students. Without the more expensive plan, I had to create my own TTS, which I did with a separate program called TextAloud. The program works great and I use it for other non-avatar announcements from Assoc. Prof. Sam that are usually much longer than 1 minute. But if I was going to really utilize the avatar, I needed to eliminate a few steps. So I upgraded to the Silver package for this semester only (3 months). The additional costs ($100) is a bit much for me to have to pay out of pocket, but for 3 months it wasn’t so bad ($24), especially since SitePal was offering a discount.
So I created a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) box for Sam and posted a few questions for students on the Ning Social Network. It was really easy to type out the answers to the questions and have SitePal convert to speech. They even had my same voice for Sam. I posted the widget below so you could give ole Sam a try.
Multimedia Infused Freshman Comp
From: soul4real
Presentation for the TYCA-West conference in Clarkdale, AZ. Using podcasting in freshman composition courses.
New Player for ENG101 Podcast
I’ve been experimenting with flash players for my weekly podcasts in my freshman composition courses. I this one from MyFlashFetish.com was pretty cool. I’ll paste the code into the course blog and see how students like it.
I made this music player at MyFlashFetish.com.
High Tech, White Boards and Developmental Writers
Okay, first notice that I didn’t say Smartboards. I said white boards. I would love to be posting about the use of Smartboards in my developmental writing class at GCC, but that is not the case today. I’m posting about the technology of white boards and markers and technology use in developmental classes. I often struggle with the protestation of using technology in developmental writing courses. Some say that developmental writers are not ready to use technology and that many will struggle with the technology and miss out on learning the necessary writing skills. Others, including myself, feel that the use of technology only enhances the writing and learning experience. The debate is on going.
From the Bedford Bibliography for Teachers of Basic Writing:
According to a survey of basic writing teachers across the country, a disparity exists in the use of technology in developmental programs. Reinforcing the claims of earlier empirical studies, Stan and Collins find that using computer technologies in developmental classrooms positively influences students’ attitudes toward writing and improves both the appearance and quantity of student writing. However, numerous institutional issues effect successful computer use, such as differences in the levels of technology currently available, resistance among faculty and students, lack of infrastructure, uneven access to professional development among staff, and lack of visibility for successful efforts.
Stan, Susan, and Terence G. Collins. “Basic Writing: Curricular Interactions with New Technology.” Journal of Basic Writing 17.1 (1998): 18–41.
I can say that I’ve experienced both views. Students in my developmental writing courses at SMC have been inundated with technology. They are using wikis, blogs, word processors and a course management system. The level of technology skills in those classes is broad with students coming in with absolutely no computer experience to those who have experience in basic word processing and email. Very few have experience using the new web 2.0 features like blogs and wikis. I lose a lot of the students early on in the developmental courses. Some semesters I’ve lost close to half of my students by the end of a semester. I’ve always associated most of the drops to the students fear of this new technology and have tried doubly hard to train students in the proper use of the technology. Well, I don’t feel that way any more.
I’m teaching a developmental writing course here at GCC, and unfortunately I have no access to technology in the class itself besides my shiny white boards, overhead projector from 1950, and a vcr/dvd combo and television. This of course is no reflection on the college; it’s just a this is what’s left situation. This late start 8 week course loaded with 24 students, and 20 showed the first day. The second class 15 came back, and now in the 4th week I’m down to 8. Where did they all go? It’s the same pattern I see in my courses at SMC where we have abundant access to technology in the class and out. So I’m fairly confident that it is not the technology scaring my students away. It’s the “I can’t do this” attitude that many of our developmental writers come into college with.
It’s not the technology. There is too much research out there that states the positive effects of technology use in developmental writing courses as well as the negative effects of a new generation of apathetic students. We just have to keep trying to find ways to keep them interested and to educate them.