podcast presentation

So you want your students to podcast

What’s a podcast?

Episodic downloadable audio (or video) content.

Does not require an iPod.

Usually has an associated RSS feed.

Recommended Podcasts

Technology: This Week in Tech

Science: Quirks and Quarks, Science Update

Social Studies: Stuff You Missed in History Class

Math: Math Grad

English Language Arts: CSTW Writers Talk

Arts: CBC Arts Podcasts

Medicine: White Coat, Black Art

How to create

Hardware (microphones, pop filters, etc)

How to create

Software

GarageBand

Audacity Portable

Myna

How to publish/share

hosting and syndication

technochild.net

mypodcast.com

ourmedia.org

feedburner.google.com

Music/Sound Effects

jamendo.com

audiofarm.org

musicalley.com

wikipedia.org/wiki/Podsafe

Legal Issues

Copyright or Creative Commons

Now let’s podcast…

recommended podcasts

A few podcasts that teachers may be interested in listening to:

Technology: This Week in Tech

Science: Quirks and Quarks, Science Update

Social Studies: Stuff You Missed in History Class

Math: Math Grad

English Language Arts: CSTW Writers Talk

Arts: CBC Arts Podcasts

Medicine: White Coat, Black Art

This is just a preliminary list to get you started, there are certainly others. Feel free to comment if there are others that you listen to.

books

Some books that I've recently read (or in most cases listened to) and would like to recommend are:

Always Looking Up: The Adventures of an Incurable Optimist - Michael J. Fox

The Four Hour Work Week: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich - Timothy Ferriss

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference - Malcolm Gladwell

Free: The Future of a Radical Price - Chris Anderson

Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future - Cory Doctorow

The Closing of the American Mind / How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students - Allan Bloom

Star Trek Movie Tie-In - Alan Dean Foster

Ask a Ninja Presents The Ninja Handbook: This Book Looks Forward to Killing You Soon - Douglas Sarine and Kent Nichols

All Creatures Great and Small - James Herriot

---
The links on the left are audio versions, on the right are dead tree editions. Enjoy.

iPods and mobile phones in class

There has been a lot of debate as of late regarding student use of electronic devices in classes.

Many schools have policies prohibiting the use of mobile phones in class, some don't even allow them in the school at all. Besides issues with students having cameras (or video cameras) with them at all times, there are legitimate concerns about test validity and security as well as time spent off-task in class.

Time off-task in class is also affected by iPod (and other mp3 player) use. In particular, the games and applications that are available on the iPod touch (and presumably the upcoming Zune HD) can be very distracting for students.

On the other hand, there are a number of potential uses for these little computer-like devices, especially if you don't have a computer for each student in your classroom. It will be interesting to see how this all develops.

audiobooks and podcasts

Our school library is starting an audiobook collection, as the start of a digital collection, and we were thinking to start with some creative commons and public domain titles.

I've mentioned before about some sources we use for free content, but I wanted to be a little more specific about some of the resources we're looking at for starting the digital collection.

Librivox - volunteer-read public domain works
Spoken Alexandria Project - creating audio books of creative commons works
Podiobooks - free serialized audio books
Lit2Go - a free online collection of audio stories and poems
Project Gutenberg - human read public domain audio books
X Minus One - a series of science fiction radio plays, not technically audio books
Cory Doctorow - an author who creative commons licenses his works, a number of them have been recorded as audio books by him or by fans

creative commons and free

For a media class that I teach occasionally we are often looking for media that students can use to create videos and such. To model digital citizenship, we endeavour to use media that is at least free (gratis), but preferably public domain or creative commons. There are, of course, some creative commons licences that allow sharing but don't allow derivatives, which means that they are not useful for us.

There are a few caveats about using creative commons or public domain works, though. Since students don't tend to be as familiar with the works/artists it often takes them longer to complete their projects than if you just let them bring in their own (usually quasi-legal) media. As well, the onus is usually on you to point the students in the right direction.

To help with this, a few sources of media that I've come across are:

Video:
Archive.org (also has other types of files)
CreativeCommons.org/video

Audio:
Jamendo
SoundSnap

Photo:
Morguefile
Stock Exchange
100 (Legal) Sources for Free Stock Images
and, of course, Flickr

Vector Graphics:
Free Vector Graphics
Vecteezy
Quality Vector Graphics

moodle introduction

Our district is just starting to introduce Moodle. In looking at some of its features, I came across a presentation that explains what Moodle is using Lego.

PD Session - Technology Gadgets

The PowerPoint file from the January 30th, 2009 PD session on Technology Gadgets can be found here.

The Importance of backups

I was reminded today, again, that it is a good idea to have copies of any important digital documents in at least two locations. Those little USB flash drives occasionally stop working or get misplaced, so I wouldn’t recommend keeping your only copy of a file on there.

Likely your school-provided network storage location is backed up automatically, so that’s the best place to store things. I’ve also written previously about online (Internet) storage options for your files.

That reminds me, I need to backup my photos at home.

digital marking

There are a few different ways I have students hand in digital assignments. For larger projects (video and audio files mostly) the students can just save them in their profile folders or on our school media server. However if you don't have this set up, or if you want to be able to do marking at home, there are a few other ways.

USB flash drives: either student or school provided, students can save their work to individual flash drives, or have multiple students save their files on a single flash drive.

Email: I usually have students email their completed assignments to me, since we have gmail accounts set up for students and teachers with about 7 GB of storage space each. I can then mark the assignments on any computer with Internet access.

TurnItIn.com: our district subscribes to this website which provides originality checking and online marking, as well as opportunities for peer review.

Learning Management Systems: online systems can be set up for assignment submission as well as peer interaction et ceteras using something like Moodle or Ning.

I'm sure there are other ways that teachers are marking digital assignments, but these are just a few I've experimented with. Feel free to comment on some of the systems you've used or seen in use.

converting midi files to mp3s

A somewhat more obscure topic, but hopefully of interest to some. You may have some (musical instrument digital interface) midi files recorded on a synthesizer or downloaded from the Internet; these are music files that the computer (or synthesizer) plays and are essentially like sheet music. In order to play these on a CD player or mp3 player, they need to be converted to sound files (mp3, wav, or others).

There is software for doing this, but an online one that I've used is on hamienet.com. Unfortunately the site launches some "pop-up" advertising, but you can just close those windows. The process for creating an mp3 from a midi file should be fairly evident from the instructions on the page. It basically involves uploading the midi file by clicking the Browse button, then setting the options (or leaving the options as they are), and clicking Convert File. After it converts the file, it gives you the option to download it as an mp3, which can then be put on your music player or burned to an audio CD.

clearing calculators

Since most of the calculators students are using these days, particularly in High School, can store notes and programs, we need to be able to ensure that there is nothing stored in them during exams.



At many schools this is accomplished by clearing the memory and having the supervisors look for the "Memory Cleared" screen:

The keys that you press in order to clear the most common calculators (TI-83+, TI-84+, and the TI-Nspire) are:

One Laptop per Child: Give One Get One

Just a little bit of a commercial this week, but since it's for a non-profit I hope you won't mind.

I've mentioned the OLPC XO before, I got one as part of the 2007 Give One Get One program. They are offering this program again this year through Amazon.com/xo, but for some reason this time Canada is considered "international" and must be ordered through Amazon.co.uk/xo starting December 16th. It is also possible to just Give One or Give Many.

In the words of the OLPC Foundation, however, "it's an education project, not a laptop project". They are not just dropping a box of laptops in a classroom and hoping that will somehow change things. Among other things, they are helping with support resources, Internet access, and teacher training in the developing nations where these laptops are being deployed. The vision of the foundation, from their website, is:

Education is Our Motivation

Founded in 2005 by MIT professor Nicholas Negroponte, the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) has a simple mission: to create educational opportunities for the world's poorest children by providing each and every one with a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected laptop with content and software designed for collaborative, joyful, self-empowered learning.

By giving a laptop, you are helping bring education to children in some of the world's most remote areas. You are connecting them to each other. To us. To hope. And to a better future.

For more details please visit laptop.org.

geeks, nerds, et al

Perhaps I should clarify a couple of the terms I use, or at least share my definitions of them. It's probably fairly well established that the term geek is no longer derogatory, that it means a person with particular skills and knowledge in technology (or Science, Math, or some related discipline). Some of us, however, feel that there needs to be a broader term for someone skilled and knowledgeable in a number of disciplines, not limited to the aforementioned. For this purpose we have adopted the term nerd, and since many of us were nerds (in the classical sense) in high school, it's not too much of a stretch.

There are other terms that are being applied, such as dork (socially awkward), or invented, such as griefer (intentionally aggravates others). As well, you can take online quizzes to see which category you might fit into. In case you're not self-aware enough to have diagnosed this already.

classroom projector and speaker connections

Since most of us aren't using TVs in the classroom anymore, the question seems to be coming up often about how to connect speakers to play videos. Usually the teacher wants to be able to play videos from a DVD/VCR as well as from the computer, and perhaps from an iPod.

You could, of course, have a separate set of speakers for each of these purposes, but it's easier and cheaper to have one set. To do this, you can connect the DVD/VCR audio output to the speakers and the computer audio output to the audio input of the DVD/VCR.

To connect the computer audio output to the DVD/VCR, use a 3.5mm Stereo Plug to 2 RCA Plug cable connected to the speaker (or headphone) output of the computer.

To connect the DVD/VCR to computer speakers, you need another 3.5mm Stereo Plug to 2 RCA Plug cable connected to the audio output and a headphone "gender changer" for connecting the male end of that cable to the male end of the speaker cable. Instead of a "gender changer", however, you can use a headphone splitter which also allows you to plug in your iPod without unplugging anything.

Of course if you use speakers with RCA inputs, such as the Behringer MS16s, you can just connect the DVD/VCR audio output with the RCA cable that came with the DVD/VCR.

If you want to show videos from your iPod and your DVD/VCR has a second "line in" connection (other than the one you are using for your computer), you can use an iPod video cable that connects to the headphone jack or to the dock connector. Of course if you have a newer iPod these cables won't work, you'll need to buy an expensive one from Apple. Or plug your iPod into your computer with a USB cable and show the videos using iTunes.

As to video to the projector, computer video goes over a VGA cable and the DVD/VCR video goes over an S-Video cable, composite cable, or component cable.

That ended up being a longer post that intended, and a bit of a commercial for monoprice.com (one of my favourite online retailers), but hopefully there was enough information there to get you set up.

InteGrade Pro

In our district we use the marks program "InteGrade Pro". While there are user manuals and help files available, a colleague and I have prepared a document that summarizes some of the common tasks and questions.

using digital textbook resources

All of our new high school Science textbooks come with a digital edition of the book, available on a CD or the textbook website. These are great to have on your school computer, and perhaps your home computer. Not only can you copy text from these pdf files, but you can also make use of any tables or graphics in your class presentations and such.


I'll assume that you're using the official Adobe Acrobat Reader, even though I recommend Foxit Reader. The process is basically the same for for any pdf reader, to copy text just select the text (you may have to first choose the text select tool or the select tool). You can then paste it into whatever other document you are working on.

To copy a graphic of any sort you want the snapshot tool. With the snapshot tool you just put a box around whatever you want to copy and then paste it into your document. However I would recommend zooming in on the part you want to copy first, because the zoom level of the Acrobat Reader affects the resolution of the copied image.

Note that these tools should certainly not be used to violate copyright law.

embedding YouTube videos in PowerPoint

When there is an online video that I want to play during a lesson, I like to have it downloaded (or at least cached) ahead of time, so that I know it will work. Having Flash videos play in PowerPoint is very slick and not that difficult, although it does involve a few steps. Unfortunately this only works in the Windows version.

So we'll assume that you have downloaded the video in Flash format. I started to write out the steps, but then decided that the wheel had been invented. So here are instructions from http://support.microsoft.com/kb/291875.

PowerPoint 2003, 2002, and 2000

To add a Shockwave Flash Object control to a slide, follow these steps:

1. Start PowerPoint, and then locate the slide that you want to insert the control into.

2. If the Control Toolbox is not already visible, point to Toolbars on the View menu, and then click Control Toolbox.

3. In the Control Toolbox, click More Controls (which looks like a hammer and wrench), and then click Shockwave Flash Object.

Note: Shockwave Flash must be installed on your computer for the Shockwave Flash Object to be listed in the Control Toolbox.

4. Draw the control on your slide.  The Shockwave Flash Object ActiveX control now appears on your slide.

To make the Shockwave Flash control play back your Flash animation file, follow these steps:

5. Right-click the inserted Shockwave Flash control, and then click Properties.

6. Click the Movie property. In the Value box, type the full drive path, including the file name (for example, C\:MyFile.swf) to the Flash file that you want to play.

7. Make sure that the Playing property is set to True.

PowerPoint 2007

Make sure that the Flash Player is installed on the computer. Then, follow these steps:

1. In PowerPoint, display in normal view the slide on which you want to play the animation.

2. Click the Microsoft Office Button at the top left, and then click PowerPoint Options.

3. Click Popular, and then click to select the Show Developer tab in the Ribbon check box under Top options for working with PowerPoint, and then click OK.

4. On the Developer tab, click More Controls (which looks like a hammer and wrench) in the Controls group.

5. In the list of controls, click Shockwave Flash Object, click OK, and then drag on the slide to draw the control.

6. Resize the control by dragging the sizing handles.

7. Right-click the Shockwave Flash Object, and then click Properties.

8. On the Alphabetic tab, click the Movie property.

9. In the value column (the blank cell next to Movie), type the full drive path, including the file name (for example, C\:MyFile.swf) to the Flash file that you want to play.

undeleting emails in FirstClass

One last post before the summer, but I'll be posting again in September.

If you've accidentally deleted an email in FirstClass, you can undelete it as long as the "trash" hasn't been "emptied". I think the trash is emptied nightly.

In order to see what you've deleted, open your mailbox and choose "show deleted items" from the "View" menu. Find the message you want to undelete, right click it, and choose "Undelete".

You can then hide the deleted items by choosing that option under the view menu.

Have a good summer.

downloading YouTube videos

It is possible to save YouTube videos to your computer so that you can watch, or show, them even if they are removed from the site, or your Internet access malfunctions. The process of this changes every once in a while, a new application (or website) comes along and/or YouTube changes something.

That being said, the way I recommend to download YouTube videos is:

1. find the video
2. copy the ULR (uniform resource locator, aka the location) from the address bar of your web browser; probably the easiest way is the right click it and choose copy
3. past the URL into the "Enter YouTube URL:" box on TechCrunch's Video Download Tool and click Get Video
4. if you are using Internet Explorer, you'll probably see a yellow bar come up at the top of the page... click that to download the file
5. you should now have the video file saved to where you had specified

Now, the video is in Flash video format, so you need some player like VLC to play it. If you are not able to install VLC because you are not the administrator of your computer, you can use the portable version.

That's it in a nutshell, comment if there's something I'm missing.