PortablePD.ca

I was just recently asked by a journalist if I knew of any student produced podcasts done in Toronto schools. It was really difficult to answer that question. One problem is that a lot of these podcasts are really only being done for a particular audience and so they don’t “advertise” by registering with a podcast provider or a directory.

I keep my eye on the iTunes Education K-12 section. The new and notable area is a great source of information on what I could be subscribing to. I have found several school podcasts that way but not everyone posts to iTunes.

Another place to find podcasts is through podcast directories. An example of one of those is CanadaPodcasts.ca A quick google search will give you all kinds of these but again if people haven’t registered it is hard to find them.

Another problem is that often the podcast descriptions and even the blogs or websites associated with the podcasts don’t give information on where the school is or what grade the students are. Be sure when you post that you provide that information so that others can find you.

So here is my call. If you are producing a podcast with your students please let me know. Leave a comment with this post. We would love to give it a listen. Tell us what school you are at and where and what grades of students are involved.

And as a personal plug…. take some time to listen to our student produced podcast PortableRadio. Our show is produced by two grade 5/6 classes in Stittsville, Ontario just outside of Ottawa.

We recently received a question about how to embed Google calendars into your blog.  Here’s a screencast showing how to do just that, at least if you are using Edublogs.

Jeff Siderius, a Grade 4 Teacher at Dunlop Public School had the following question about my class blog:

How did you set up your students as contributors on Edublogs?  Did you get email addresses for all of them?  Or, did you use the linked gmail addresses that I’ve been reading about, using one email address for your class?

Click here to open a PDF, complete with snazzy screenshots, to see an explaination of how things were set up.

A few teachers in our board discovered ads embedded in their Edublogs blogs a few weeks ago.  Here’s an exchange that took place over our board’s computer contact teacher forum:

Hiya,

We’ve got a class blog, and one parent has written to me a few times saying they’re seeing ads for diets, lesbian dating, etc. on the left side of our blog.  I’ve never seen any ads on edublogs on any of the computers I’ve used - home or work.    Our site is 45keeling.edublogs.org

Anyone else have this problem, or have any suggestions for me?  Don’t want this parent to continue to get these ads/complain, but not sure what to do!

Shannon

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Hi,

I’m using Edublogs as well and personally witnessed what the parent was talking about (and lived to tell the tale…) on my class blog. It happened one day last week and, thankfully, has not happened since.

I found mention to this issue in their forums:

Hi Guys,

Apologies for this, it was a bug in our system and should be fixed now, we have been experimenting with (extremely occasional) advertising in order to support Edublogs and you can find more information here.

It should be fixed up now.

Cheers, James

However, I just discovered if I searched for my class blog on Google (i.e. search “56nt edublogs”) and follow the link, the advertising is back.  Going directly to my site by type its URL (http://grade5nt.edublogs.org/) results in no advertising.

We’ll have to watch closely how this plays out.

Nathan

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I had noticed this too, but as mentioned it only seems to happen when finding the blog via a Google search. I just tested it by doing a google search for my class blog and when I clicked on the link, it was full of advertisements. When I hit F5 to refresh the screen, the advertisements went away.

Marc

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I tried it going through the URL, no ads, then through Google, ads this morning, no ads this afternoon. I am going to keep an eye on it, and also contact Edublogs if I get ads again. Has anyone else contacted Edublogs?

Thanks,

Barb

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I think that once you view the site without ads, it will automatically go back to that version unless you delete the cookies on your browser (which is why you didn’t get ads this afternoon). For example, I brought up the version with ads this morning through a google search, then I refreshed the screen to bring it up without ads. When I just did a google search again, and clicked on the link…it came up without ads. BUT, when I cleared the cookies in my browser and did a new search with google, it came up with ads again.

Marc

Tracey Nicholson from Jack Donahue Public School sent us some questions her students had about Audacity.  Jane and I have encountered these obstacles in the past and thought it would be worthwhile sharing:

Hi Nathan:

We are having trouble with exporting our “Audacity” file into a mp3 file.
We are also having trouble with coping and pasting Audacity files.

If you can help us that would be great.

I’ll take a crack at answering these questions.

“We are having trouble with exporting our ‘Audacity’ file into a mp3 file.”

When you export an Audacity file to MP3 you go to File/Export as MP3.  The purpose of doing this is to create a much smaller sized audio file that can easily be played on everyone’s computer over the Internet.

You will run into trouble if a file called the LAME MP3 encoder was not installed along with Audacity.  For copyright reasons this file has to be installed separately.  It’s simple enough to do if you are using a home computer or have permission to install software on your school computer.  Just follow this link and follow the instructions there.

“We are also having trouble with coping and pasting Audacity files.”

As far as copying and pasting files, I’m assuming the problem happens after you’ve saved your Audacity project and you decide to copy the Audacity files onto a flash drive or move it to another folder.  When you go to open up the copied Audacity file much of the sound is missing.  Aaaargh!

There’s a simple way to avoid this and, once you’ve done it, it stays in the software’s settings, meaning you probably won’t have to do it again.

Here’s what you do:

1.  In the menu select Edit the Preferences.
2.  Click on “File Formats”
3.  Select “Make a copy of the file before editing (Safer)”

This will make sure all of the bits and pieces of audio you need are included the folder you copy over.

I hope this is useful.

It is always great to promote one of our own.

Merivale High School, one of our OCDSB high schools, has begun podcasting.  MoRadio is on the air. This project is the brain child of teacher Scott Hughes. They promise “We’ve got Mo Music, Mo entertainment and Mo information than any other Podcast!” . With 3 podcasts out at the time of this writing, they are working hard to meet that promise.

Be sure to visit them at moradio.ca

written by Jane Smith

photo

An unexpected side effect of doing a podcast with our students has been the media attention. Not that we are complaining. We think we are pretty darn interesting… no self esteem issues here. Anyway, this spring we were contacted by Katie DeRosa, a fourth year journalism student at Carleton University. She had heard our kids Portable Radio Point of View on the CBC morning show and wanted to do a documentary about kids and podcasting. Katie did a pretty comprehensive job. She interviewed Nathan and me, the students, a parent and the producer of the CBC morning show. We are very pleased with the results of the documentary.

Portable Radio Documentary

^photo

Our second episode includes a discussion about why we podcast with our students, Portable PD Podcast Picks Karen’s Mashups and 1-2-3 Listen 2 Me, our wonderful web resource Levelator and a lesson on making stations IDs with Audacity.

Portable PD Podcast - Episode 2

Lesson

Sound Effects and music to get you started

Links

Audacity (free audio editing software)
1-2-3 Listen 2 Me - a podcast made by a family in South Africa
Karen’s Mashups - a podcast that samples other podcasts
Levelator - balances the volume on your audio

Music

Hot Doggin’ - by DeerFoot (Podsafe Music Network)
The Kool-Aid Makes Itself - Psykosoul (Podsafe Music Network)
Mumbo Jumbo - BD Lenz (Podsafe Music Network)
Hook, Line and Slinker - Podington Bear
Bump and Run - Derek Audette

Other Audio

Sniffles and Sneezes (1955) - Prelinger Archives

Article

Nanotechnology paves way for super iPods

Mark from Thunder Bay had a couple of questions about starting up a podcast:

How expensive are the voice recorders?

We’ve found decent/reliable voice recorders for under $100. Look here for more information about what we use or hope to use in the future. They kind of look like cellphones and uploading audio files to your computer works the same way as a digital camera.

How do you evaluate students?

We view podcasting as an extension of our Lanaguage Arts program. Look here for more information about assessment.

How much of each day is devoted to the podcast?

We’ve experimented with a variety of models for this. At the moment we have reserve one hour for podcasting every Friday. Also, whenever students have free time they often choose to work on their podcasts.

How many computers do you use?

Our classes each have a networked Windows XP computer. We also have access to a media cart that we wheel into our rooms. Our students visit our school’s computer lab (30 XP computers) once a week for an hour, but apart from a unit on using Audacity at the start of the year, we usually don’t use lab time time for podcasting.

A few weeks ago we received an Asus eeePC.  It’s less that half the size of a regular laptop but appears to be ideal for our students to use it for editing audio and word processing.  We plan to write about those machines in the near future.

Jane and I also spend time on our home computers for final editing.

How about software?

Audio-editing sofware: The main piece of software we use is Audacity. If you are on a Mac, we hear that GarageBand works exceptionally well.

What else will you need?

• online storage space: We store our audio files on our school website. Another option is to use storage space that comes free with Edublogs.org. They offer 100MB which works out to be roughly an hour and half of MP3 audio.
• a blog: This makes it easy to let people know everytime you have a new episode. We’ve had success using Edublogs.org, a free service offered to educators.

OK. It’s cool, but more than a little strange, to have children come up to you during yard duty saying “I saw your picture on the cover of a magazine.”

Jane and I are very happy with how the article turned out.  The pictures of the students turned out really well. We had no idea we’d make the cover!

Click here to see the entire article.