Kids Can Talk Podcast Series

A World of DinosaursClick on image to link to my podcast
You can also go to my PodOmatic.com home page found at: http://www.podomatic.com/profile

Wow…podcasting…what a great opportunity to explore your own interests and areas of expertise and an amazing platform for creating your own show on virtually any topic under the sun. The story shared by Richardson of one of the first podcasts he heard by a 13-year-old Matthew Bischoff who started his own radio show from his bedroom was so motivating…it made me want to start my own radio show. What an amazing opportunity for all individuals to have their voice heard without having to sell their idea to a big radio station or television network. The only downfall of the widespread use of podcasting is just that. There is so much out there that it is difficult to sift through and find the best resource to suit your needs. I have to explore the medium much more to narrow down what is available and worthwhile to subscribe to. I have not as yet linked up with RSS feeds and podcasting, which I definitely will do very soon.

My Own Personal Learning

To create my very first podcast I took the advice of Richardson and created an account on PodOmatic.com, which was pretty easy. The only difficulty I had was when I started putting together my first episode it would never save my first page and I had to create the title and description portion about 3 times over. When I went back to it I could never find the “my podcasts” link. I realized that I had to create my own URL but I ended up doing this at the end of the process, after completing the uploading of my audio portion of the podcast and then it finally popped up on my home page with the option of creating episode 2.

I also had trouble uploading my podcast until I realized I had to convert the file into an MP3. Which I probably should have known because when I went back to the readings in Richardson, one of the 4 components in creating a podcast was an MP3 file! Can I also mention that I hate converting files…it’s probably the easiest thing to do but I always seem to forget how to do it when faced with the situation. Finally figured it out with a couple of questions to my tech adviser (aka: my husband) I did not like that PodOmatic.com did not make the problem clear to me, the prompt that came up was ‘server error’ when it should have been something like: ‘does not recognize format.’ That would have saved me some frustration.

I created my MP3 file using the program GarageBand that was not too bad to utilize being my first time using it. You can also edit within the program and I did some minor editing deleting long pauses and a section in which my guest (interviewed my daughter) would not answer because it upset her to think about the prospect of Spinosaurus getting hurt and possibly dying if it fell on it’s sail-like spine which is attached directly to it’s vertebrae.

I also added an image to the podcast from my own files which was easy to do through the option of uploading images and then adding it as media when publishing the podcast.

I am quite impressed with the final product although thinking about it more there is even more I could have done like add another background track with dinosaur sounds or possibly music. I would also like to figure out how to add video or change the images while the podcast is running. Time permitting I will go back and enhance the podcast and I would like to take the opportunity to continue interviewing kids on topics they would like to talk about and create more episodes of KidsCanTalk.

Teaching and Learning

In the school environment there are many opportunities to explore podcasting and the great thing about it is that there are so many other classroom teachers around the globe that are creating their own class podcasts, which opens up the door to sharing ideas and information with a larger audience; creating the ability to connect, communicate and corroborate with other students’ experiences and learning.

I browsed through the many podcasts available through PodOmatic.com and there were great resources within many subject areas such as Arts, Education, Government Organizations, News/Politics, Science/Medicine, Sports and Rec and Technology. Their most popular is of course music and the site promotes and highlights popular music genres from around the globe. I got to listen to some funky DJ’s while working through this latest blog, which was great. I’m sure students would be inspired by the possibilities here!

Ideas I had for use of podcasts within the classroom and school library would include:

· Sharing ideas, concepts and reading with each other as students progress through their assignments as mentioned within the article, “Something in the Air: Podcasting in Education” by Gardner Campbell. The students also created a movie-trailer style podcast on Nietzsche and Also Sprach Zarathustra (more commonly known as the 2001 Space Odyssey theme song originally written by Strauss) this would be neat to hear!

· Many forms of oral presentations, which may or may not include images, video or music. For example presentations on historical or fictional characters, political debates, radio style commercials, radio dramas, short subject documentaries.

· Sharing of original stories, poetry, letters, personal accounts, etc

· In science, lab results that could be accompanied by a live presentation of the experiment.

· Poetry readings

· Book talks

· Sharing a quote or excerpt from a book to generate discussion

· Music presentations

There are so many possibilities available which are limited only by your imagination. I find that this platform has the ability to enhance creativity while incorporating a lot of learning and personal expression.

Social Bookmarking...helpful or hazardous?

All my Delicious bookmarks are gone!!

Has Delicious been shut down already. Just signed up on Delicious last year. Thank goodness I didn’t post too many bookmarks on the site. It was part of a class assignment but when I went back to check on them they were gone.

I was going to transfer them onto Diigo since I know that Delicious may not be around too much longer but I guess they are gone forever…? That is my fear with these on-line bookmarking sites. I need to do a bit more research to see if there are ways to save them elsewhere, possibly on your own drive instead of just having them float around in cyber space.

My Own Personal Learning

Well, beyond that…I signed up for a Diigo account and I do like the features on it so far. I wasn’t sure whether you could organize categories by topics but discovered that you can do this by creating your own lists and naming them. I was a bit confused at first on how to add a bookmark to my particular list but realized that I had to install the Diigo Toolbar, then it worked out swimmingly. I created two category lists named ‘Boys Reading’ and ‘Digital Literacy.’ I will definitely add more lists in order to organize my bookmarks further. I find it much easier to locate them when divided this way instead of having this big long list of bookmarks. I had them in one long list on Delicious and did not like this option, maybe I missed something in the organization? The only problem now is going through the thousands of bookmarks I have collected on my computer and adding them here. May be it is best to start fresh and then begin to scan my older, existing bookmarks and bring over the ones are most current and relevant. Thus will be an on-going project that will take a little bit of time.

I also added images and notes to ‘my library,’ which is a neat option. I couldn’t figure out if you can upload images from the Internet though. I must investigate further…I also liked the option of highlighting text and did not realize that it would be placed right below the original bookmark for easier access. I created a sticky note for the highlighted section as well, great for people who have a terrible memory like me, and this is an added bonus for reminding me why this particular site was important or why and how I wanted to use it.

I like the option of including a read later section so that if I cannot get to a site right away I will not forget about it when I include it in my read later section.

I also joined a group; this is always useful in order to follow groups of particular interest to you. I joined the group Web 2.0 Tools for Teachers. It linked me to some good information that I will explore further.

Teaching and Learning

For students there would be many ways to use Diigo as an organizational tool.

· I would be able to create lists for my individual classes organizing their bookmarks for class library projects. I could also create subject categories for classes who are working in specific subject areas or particular topics, e.g. ancient civilization, human body, plants, etc.

· Students could organize and collect the various images they needed for a particular project or assignment and log them on the Diigo page until they needed to use them or include them within their work.

· I could highlight specific areas for students so that they new what information was the most useful and also create sticky notes with pertinent information.

· Students could also post notes on the Diigo page that I could respond to and address for further clarification.

· We could also connect to other groups and communities to access web pages that may be beneficial to use; we could share and pool resources this way.

· Tags created also are a great help for students to locate the information that they need and we could review them in order to help them with their searches. Sometimes the hardest thing to do is to learn how to search and what to look for. This will help students problem solve and think about vocabulary and how best to find information on specific topics.

Here is my link to my Diigo page: http://www.diigo.com/user/lindadibiase

I look forward to organizing it further and hopefully it will be around for a while.

My First Ever YouTube Video Upload!

I borrowed this video from one of my husband's collection of work related videos. He has quite a few exciting stunt shots...enjoy! He would have loved to be this guy.

WOW…this was easier than I thought! Just uploaded my first video to YouTube without pulling out any hair and YouTube just sent me a Congratulations e-mail too.

Now I am thinking that I should create my own private sharing account so that I can share recent family videos with family and friends. YouTube is quite easy to navigate and I found useful tools easily with short, uncomplicated instructions that give you the option to use the tool more in depth when you click ‘learn more.’

My Own Personal Learning:

I learned how to create your own channel, which I will explore further because at this point I have only one video upload. This option allows you to compile all of your videos and create a personal channel, you can choose categories for your channels and as a user you can find specific topics when searching through the various channels that others have created. You can subscribe to particular channels of interest and YouTube will send you all of their recent activity. I subscribed to NYSSBA0IT's Channel that is put together by the New York School Board. Here is a link to one of the videos that I watched:

I learned how to embed videos to my blog and I created a JPEG image to link the video. I also linked my YouTube video uploads to my Twitter homepage to share my recent videos there. You can also link to a variety of other social networks like: orkut, Myspace, Face Book, StumbleUpon, Digg, reddit and tumblr. I also created my own playlist where you can organize and compile all of the videos you have watched and would like to watch again or share with others. You can create a favorites page with all of your choice videos as well. You can purchase, download and watch movies, I wonder what the copyright regulations would be on this and if you could watch them at school? You can also add captions or subtitles to your videos, which I thought is quite useful. Another feature is to add music to your video for free and the ‘insight’ option allows you to study the demographics of the viewers who are watching your videos, quite useful if you want to try to target a particular audience.

Teaching and Learning:

The implications on teaching would be beneficial due to the visual possibilities available to you, your students and their teachers. For research alone YouTube serves as a great visual guide to any kind of video you would like to watch from educational videos that teach the alphabet to medical research. YouTube can be viewed or it can also be used to view your own creations offering so many possibilities for classroom and library use.

When thinking about safety and security within the school environment YouTube allows teachers to create their own private sharing accounts where only invited students and teachers may watch videos that are created. You can also choose whether you want your videos to be public or private.

There are numerous ways in which to incorporate YouTube in an educational setting, these are some of the ideas I brainstormed:

· For primary use teachers can access a variety of videos to share on the white board to promote early literacy and learning. Some examples include: alphabet learning, shapes, colours, counting, language learning (great visuals for ESL learners), animal videos, songs, music and art.

· YouTube provides an exhaustive and extensive library of visuals for any research project and with a quick instruction lesson students would be able to find what they are looking for quite easily.

Again it is not difficult to discover inappropriate material and language at times so hopefully the school blocker is one that filters well without putting too many limits on searches.

· Students can create their own short films for projects and post them on YouTube to share with the class

· Also YouTube could be an alternative to in class presentations. Students could video tape their own presentation and show them in front of the class instead of having a live presentation. This could allow the students to perfect their presentations and many may feel more comfortable with this kind of option. They could record research presentations, book talks, debates, etc…

· Students could also create their own music videos for projects in language arts or music class.

These are just a few ideas and with a little research on video sharing sites I am sure you will find many concepts to inspire and engage student learning.