It's funny how things converge at a moment when you just happen to find the need- does this sound too zen? Well as a result of our recent
OZ/NZ Educators group meeting, with
Joe Dale and Mark Pendleton leading the group, I have decided to try and tackle the idea of actually podcasting. I know that
Jo Mcleay and I have discussed an Australian version of the EDtech Podcast with an emphasis on women, but the technical skills were something I just found a bit too daunting. Joe and Mark did a great job, but I got lost in the huge torrent of information, thinking that I would have to come back and listen to the recording later to make sense of it.
Later this week my husband gave me his old 20G Ipod - it seemed huge when we first bought it - as he now is totally absorbed by his new ITouch. The Ipod has a voice recorder and an ITrip transmitter. So ... I decided to get some raw files to play around with and then follow the information trail that my personal learning network- aka the twitter gang- had left for beginning podcasters.I also listened to
Andrew Douch's podcast on
Knowledge Bank about his award winning website and this was very encouraging-the guy is a legend and so committed and talented!!
So armed with my 'new' Ipod and mike I went to my year 8 class of bloggers and decided to do some research. I chatted to the class in groups of three- luckily I had a small office off the main room so we could talk; and I tried to think like Tony Richards of the EDTech Crew- a fantastic and very focussed interviewer.I asked them lots of questions about blogging this year and what they thought of it. The whole process was wonderful and I have nearly an hour of recording and I am so proud of my kids - they said such thoughtful and interesting things and it was surprisingly easy to do. In fact one group got out their mp3 players and began to interview each other on the other side of the room after they had spoken to me.An Assistant Principal came into the computer room while we were in there and the kids proudly showed him their blogs and explained what we have been doing.
That night I came home and tried to work out
Audacity- still a bit confused there. Frank helped - and complained as always that it wasn't a Mac. Then I got online and got help. We downloaded the file- or is that up? and the collected the 'Lame ' encoder that converts files into mp3s and that is where I am at the moment. i have been sent files and tutorials and videos from several lovely people-
Allanah King is so generous and so are John Pearce and Tony Richards. I have been to
podomatic and made an account, checked out the ITunes store for Podcasts to subscribe to and also found royalty free music to use. Now if someone would write my 100+ reports and do my exam marking I could get on with the fun stuff!!
My next job is to get a name for my podcasts and then to put it together with music and even edit some noisy bits. Cos I am a newb at this it will take time but I have help just 140 characters away and I will learn before I go to NECC.
Watch this space- a podcast will arrive soon!!
