Hello Nathan!

I’m a Grade 7/8 Teacher from Thamesville, Ontario. I’ve recently started a class blog (http://www.jpepper.edublogs.org) (January 2009) and have stumbled across yours. You have an excellent blog and have some very creative students. After March Break, my class will be starting to work on podcasting. I’ve noticed your class has some podcasts as well.

I have a couple of questions, if you don’t mind answering:

1) Is portableradio.ca a place where I could eventually upload my students’ podcasts or is it your site?

2) I noticed on your blog [5nt.ca] that beside each student’s name in brackets is the number of posts they have. How do I get this application to work on my blog?

Thanks for your time.

Jason

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Jason Pepper
Good Shepherd Catholic School
Thamesville, ON

Hi Jason,

I’ll do my best to answer your questions:

1) Is portableradio.ca a place where I could eventually upload my students’ podcasts or is it your site?

Portableradio.ca is the blog that my class (5nt.ca) and Jane Smith’s class of grade 5/6 students (56js.ca) share as our podcast site. The site is designed to showcase the podcasts made by the two classes.

The portableradio.ca site runs off of Edublogs.org.  I see that you are using Edublogs for your blog as well.  You can upload your sound to your blog but the free version limits you to 20MB which very roughly translates into about 25 minutes of mp3 audio.  I put together a video tutorial on how you do that.

If you get hooked on this stuff, you will want to find more storage space.  One options is to become an Edublogs supporter and receive 5GB of storage ($). Or, your school might have its own website for uploading audio.  Once you’ve done uploaded the audio, figure out its URL and link to it from your Edublogs blog.

2) I noticed on your blog [5nt.ca] that beside each student’s name in brackets is the number of posts they have. How do I get this application to work on my blog?

Here’s what Jason is referring to:

I see that your students each have their own blog and you have them listed under “Blogroll’ which, in effect, is a list of links to separate websites.  I don’t know of a way to make the number of posts they write on their individual blogs show up on yours.

In my case, I’ve elected for my students not to have their own blogs. My students contribute to the one blog. That way, I can moderate all posts and comments. I’ve set each student as “Contributor” and list their names as categories. Whenever they write a post, they check off their name a pull-down menu of categories.  Click here for more information about how we set this up. I have a suspicion that some of the things we talk about in this document may now require you becoming an Edublogs supporter ($)

Here’s how I made the number of posts written by each student appear. In your Edublogs dashboard go to “Design” and select “Widgets”.  If you haven’t already, drag over the “Categories” widget into your sidebar.  Click on “edit” and check “Show Post Counts”. Remember this only works with the “Category” widget and not “Blogroll”.

I hope that was useful.  Let us know when your podcast is “live” on the internet.  We’d love to add a link to it here on our PortablePD.ca site.

There is a real cool factor about having your podcast in iTunes.  It makes it easy for people to find you and to subscribe to your show. And it’s FREE!

The first thing to do is to get an account with Feedburner. This is a free service that does all the mumbo jumbo scripting that needs to be done for iTunes to recognize a podcast. Nathan did try to script it himself following iTunes instructions but I don’t think it was a pretty experience (he still twitches a bit). A feedburner account will give you a url that leads iTunes to the stuff that it needs and understands. Another reason for having a Feedburner account is that it will also give you statistical information on how many visitors your are getting and what episodes they are listening to.

Once you have the Feedburner account, download iTunes application and visit the (if you haven’t done so already) iTunes store page. Click on Podcasts in the left hand column. Once you are on the Podcast page it is just a matter of scrolling down to the bottom of the left hand column to where it says Learn More. One of the items is Submit a podcast. From there I believe it is pretty straight forward (although I haven’t actually done it myself but Nathan makes it sound easy).

You will need to plug in information as they ask for it. They will ask you for a credit card number but that is just to establish your iTunes account (unless you already have one). Posting a podcast is free just as subscribing to podcasts is free.

Let us know when you have your podcast up and ready for subscribers. We are always looking to promote student produced podcasts.

Take advantage of the Discussion button on the top of this blog where you can post questions or dicussion items.  Sending e mails also works nathan.toft @ocdsb.ca  or jane.smith@ocdsb.ca

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

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.

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You will need:

• computer with internet access
• microphone hooked up to your computer
• audio editing software (we use Audacity and it is a free download)
• a blog (we got one for free at Edublogs.org)
• online storage space (Edublogs gives some storage space with their free blogs. Once your podcast grows you’ll want to explore other storage options. If you work in the Ottawa Carleton District School Board, NetCaster provides a means to store and share audio and video files online.)

Do your research.

Listen to as many podcasts as you can. Here’s a couple to get you started:

Portable Radio
Radio WillowWeb
HartBeat Radio
Studio 26

Record some audio

Hook up a microphone to your computer. We recommend you think cheap at this stage – use old computer mikes or buy them at dollar stores. Record some audio. Get some practice working with audio editing programs. Audacity is a free download and works very well.

Once you feel comfortable enough with the software get your students to do some recording. Think small. Two to five minutes is a great way to test the waters and figure out what works for you and your students.

Name your podcast

Give your podcast a memorable name. Sign up for a blog. We use free blogs offered at edublogs.org. The blog is a convenient way for people to find, listen to, and comment on your podcast.

Upload your sound file

Login into your blog and select “Write a Post”. Scroll down a little further to see a section that allows you to upload your audio MP3 file. After you have uploaded, click “send to editor.”

Write your shownotes

Now write a description (known as “shownotes”) of what happens in your first episode. Once you are happy with everything click “Publish”.

Spread the word

Congratulations! You now have an official podcast that can be accessed by anyone in the world with an Internet connection. Start advertising your podcast’s web address: send newsletters to parents, get a link to your podcast added to your school’s website, mention it in your emails – do whatever it takes to get the word out.

Tell Us!

We’d love to hear of any podcasts you put together. Leave us a comment or email us (Nathan.Toft@ocdsb.ca or Jane.Smith@ocdsb.ca) and we’ll let our growing Portable PD community know about it as well.

Creating a Podcast: From Tony Vincent’s LearninginHand.com

Having a blog is a must when podcasting. The blog takes care of all that RSS mumbo jumbo that allows people to subscribe to your show. It also provides a means for your listeners to leave comments about each episode and post you make.

“Blogs in Plain English” is from CommonCraft:

Edublogs: Free blogs for educators. This is the service we use for this site.

Click here for a handy PDF created by Nathan Toft and Jane Smith explaining how to set up student accounts for Edublogs using only one email account!

*** The folks at Edublogs have simplified signing up multiple students. All going well, the work around mentioned above should no longer be necessary ***

Getting Started With Edublogs: guides, videos, tips and resources for getting started.

Feedburner: Type in your edublogs URL and it will create a feed that iTunes can easily understand. Huge time saver!

10 Dollar Domains: For a yearly investment of just over ten dollars, you can purchase your own domain name as a pointer to your websites and blogs.

iTunes: Installing this free software makes it easy to subscribe to podcasts and transfer them to your iPod. Handy to have even if you do not own an iPod. There is also an extensive directory of podcasts. A word of caution: not all podcasts are appropriate for students.

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Google Reader: Web based site to track whatever blogs and podcasts you would like to track. You can listen to shows through Google Reader instead of visiting each podcast site.
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What the heck is RSS anyway? Here’s “RSS in Plain English” from CommonCraft:

Download Video: Posted by leelefever at TeacherTube.com.