Friday, May 28, 2010

The Podcast

In seeing some of my classmates post, I noticed it was going to be exclusively a "gabcast.com" event, this podcast assignment. So I went looking for another option. gCast.com, another podcasting site is not accepting new signups and as of February 1, 2010 they disallowed new uploads. Option 2, Clickcaster.com, this is either down or has been removed from the web. Try number three, audacity.com. Through audacity I found that this was an audio file editor and though great for recording and uploading audio files to a webpage or server. So this is what I will try. Assuming this works, I will post the audio file as an attachment in this blog and hope all is well.

I like the idea of being able to record classroom activities so parents and students can see what is being taught. One of the biggest problems I hear from my teacher friends is parents who "help" with the homework and undo teaching efforts. Or show the students shortcuts that are not always accurate. The second related problem is when the parents become upset over what the student thinks the teacher said. While this is a mouthful the situation often arises with Mrs. X said "..." and then the parents start calling the administrators without ever know what was said. But how cool would it be to upload the lecture of today's class. Did your child have a doctors appointment and miss class? take 20 minutes and help them catch up. Want to know what your child learned in school today? here is a list of the subjects and topics. Would you like to help your child study? watch these clips and ask the study questions? Did your student just not get todays math lesson? watch it again and see if something makes sense.

In the classes that have had past, or online lectures I have excelled through. If there was something I did not understand I can play it again and again. Was the teacher speaking too fast?*pause* catch up and *play*

In an age where parents pull their kids from school for the slightest issue, vacation, or whim how nice would it be to have a resource for them to "never miss class" or at least have the opportunity to never mis the learning.

As to my experiences with audacity program, I was surprised to find it was on my laptop already. Bonus! I like it because if you stutter, stammer, or get caught in the "ums" you can highlight that portion and delete it. There are all kinds of editing options which one could use. You can inert music, or other audio files, run sections in repeat, run it backwards etc.


It does seem blogger does not have a quick and easy way to post audio only files, but attaching this a video seems to have worked. This is me crossing my fingers.

*edit: SO that didn't work, but using the help bar directed me to box.net and I am now linking
to this blog. * end edit*

For future reference and for classmates who read this before they post, there is a bigger list of blogger supported podcasting sites through the help site.

What I like about this:
A. it is free, not the first five minutes, but once you have the program...you have what you need.
B. You can edit the silences and if you do it right :( the stutters too.
C. IF you are a teacher who teaches the same subject a few times a day you can take the best of the crop and post that one.
D. While I would like to have audio and visual, this is pretty easy to record the basics.

I had a computer science course here at IUPUI in which the professor had in one window the speaker, in another the running time, controls etc, and in a third and the largest examples of what he was discussing be it power points, illustrations or animations. It was easy to use and follow. This was podcasting, education style, at its best by my record anyway.

4 comments:

  1. Hmmm. It seems as though the podcast is not coming up...stand by.

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  2. All better... hey learning is a process not a recipe.

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  3. glad to see you got it all figured out...box was simple

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  4. The clarity is amazing. Thanks for choosing to demo a different program so we can hear a comparison.

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