Testing podcasting

How do I point to an MP3 file on this blog?

Other Video tools

Since we have Macintosh computers in the lab - naturally we are exploring Mac based software. (we aren't going to show you that we could run Windows on these Macs... ) So what are the options on the Windows side for digital movie making. The bundled software on the Windows side is MovieMaker. So look for that on your PCs - once you learn the concepts of digital video creation, learning other tools comes much more quickly. Now more sophisticated video editing software gets a little more complicate - but more powerful. Mac - Final Cut Pro, Windows - Adobe Premiere are two more professional software tools for video editing.

Actually we may experiment with another fun video tool that I discovered online - xtranormal. I have not decided yet, but thinking that one of our "flex times" we could take some time to do this in class!! What do you think?

NPR story on LA teachers

As I was coming into work today, I was listening to NPR and the linked story came on the radio. (nice how you can listen to a radio broadcast, then go to a website to read it or listen again!) Well the story was not encouraging to new teachers who are going to be looking for a job (at least in Los Angeles), but one subplot of the story mentioned a group of Mathematics teachers who created a horror video where the school is haunted by a crazed kidnapper named Pythagoras (video was not linked on the story). Well that was good timing since today we begin our foray into digital video creation. So you Mathematics people - I am looking forward to seeing what you come up with on your video projects! Now on to iMovie!

Welcome to EDUC 540!

I am really looking forward to EDUC 540 class starting on June 15. The only thing that I am a little hesitant about is that there would be so many different technologies to explore during these 4 weeks, it will be hard to decide which to choose. As always the video editing tasks are fun. This time we are going to hit this during the first week! I have not done this before, but why delay a good thing! We are going to be using the newest version of iMovie in class and this has some better tools than the previous version of iMovie.

We also will be testing out tk20 to deliver and turn in the assignments for the course. This is the first attempt at using only tk20 for course delivery/management. We will see how it goes!

OK hang on, here we go!

Google Apps Ideas

Since joining the "sandbox" group (out of the goodness of the CIT folks hearts) I have been thinking about ways to integrate google tools into learning/collaborative activities. I have previously required learners in my course to create and maintain a blog as a part of the course expectations. I have learned a great deal from these graduate students as they share their ideas, experiences and discoveries via this medium. More than likely I will continue this practice in courses that lend themselves to this form of communication.

A newer collaboration for me has been to co-write a grant application using Google Docs. Some collective reflections from this process I plan to share with the "sandbox" group during the last session.

I also am in the process of designing a guest class presentation in colleague's classroom next week and have decided to create and publish my plans through Google docs for the class participants. I may decide to publish a survey before class to get a sense of the participants knowledge and interest around several of the topics. The survey will most likely be created using another tool than Google.

The final idea for this posting is that I would like to see if there is interest among faculty in the College of Education to explore Google for Educators. If there is interest, this may turnout to be something similar to the "sandbox" experience we have been having these last several weeks.

EMail practices

After hearing Grover talk about gmail and how he is using this for all his email, I have decided to try this out for myself. I am a Macintosh user by preference and enjoy using Leopard's email client. I am in the process of testing:

• forwarding all my JMU email to my Google mail account. (I have consistently run out of space with my JMU account and hopefully this will allow me to keep email as long as I want to)
• I still wish to use the Leopard (Apple) email client so I am testing my configurations so that I can send mail either from my JMU address or from my Gmail account using this email client.
• I am unclear about where copies of my sent-mail messages go when I use my JMU account - I suspect these still remain on the JMU server (can anyone clarify this?). If this is the case I will most likely will have to move these over manually to my gmail account.
  

Well I will see how my email adventures go this week and then decide if this practice is worth continuing for me.

Our Stories

I am intrigued by the newly announced web repository of "Our Stories": a collaboration between One Laptop per Child, UNICEF, Museum of the Person (Brazil) and Google. My understanding is that this site exists to share personal stories from around the world - hopefully getting 5 million individual stories. This sounds like a very engaging, illuminating resource for education.

What do you think of this? How about sharing your story or your student's stories or their interviews with significant people in their life. There is a guide for students and adults to assist in this process. The laptops from OLPC will have the capability to capture these stories digitally and then post them to the site. (this is still being implemented it seems).

Listen, Learn, Live... (seems to be their tagline) not a bad life philosophy!