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.

Click here to see a larger version.

If you would prefer to learn how to embed by reading – check out this How To Embed a Google Calendar in a Blog Page! (Thanks Sue Waters for the link).

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.

NOTE:  You now have to be an Edublogs Supporter ($) in order for all of this to work.

Click here for a tutorial on how to do this if you are not an Edublogs Supporter.