Voices Through the Dark: I Keep Hearing Things

In the Dark Ages: Reflections on the Process of Learning about Podcasting

Never was I more convinced that a topic would be easier. After tackling media previously in the course that I was unfamiliar with, I believed! YES! This is just like the audio recording of my past. I knew that if I just found an MP3 player, I could do this, just like I did in the 1980’s when I created listening stations. How could I go wrong on this one? I knew it was a useful learning tool; heck, I have dome it all before.

Or so I thought.

Once again, my mind needed expansion. I was back in the analog age but the digital Web 2.0 world is not just about production, but about publishing. I had felt somewhat prepared for digital audio recording as I had created clips for my Glogster presentation, so I had figured out how to use an MP3 player. I’d even figured out how to download the sound bites into the computer and upload them onto Glogster, all helping to build my false sense of competencies.

Chris Kertz in “Podcasting in Libraries”, Library 2.0 and Beyond (2009, Nancy Courtney, ed) quotes the New Oxford American Dictionary, defining podcasting as “a digital recording of a radio broadcast or similar program, made available on the Internet for downloading to a personal audio player”. Kertz states that it is the RSS feed that defines a podcast.

Kertz notes that podcasting was the word of the year in 2005 (other contenders… bird flu and persistent vegetative state) … a mere five years later, it is still an emerging technology however it has made huge inroads in peoples listening and learning modalities.

Podcasting in Plain English, like all the common craft videos, provided yet another excellent succinct explanation of how podcasts are used.






The trailfires, including, appropriately, podcasts, walked me step by step through many parts of podcasting.

Kertz in Library 2.0 and Beyond was detailed in how podcasts can be utilized in an educational setting. From library instruction to booktalks to professional development, the ways that podcasting can be used spans the range of the tasks we do in school libraries. It is a tool for education, it is a tool to support collaborative learning; these ideas were easy to wrap my head around. The set up description seemed simple enough. Richardson's advice (Blogs, Wikis and Podcasts, 2009) to try it out myself first proved fortuitous. What I imagined as a fairly quick process turned out to have far more challenges than I had imagined.

The technical learning in podcasting was a steep learning curve. Truly I found it was three steps up, two down, and I've not yet reached the peak, if one could find an end in the learning curve that is invovled in the read / write web. I'm in the dark every step of the way. The primary steps that I had done before (recording MP3 files, downloading htem onto the computer, adding them to a Glogster) were all attainable, but allowed me only to start the learning 'climb'. Files in hand. I had two projects in mind when planning to podcast, (Do to learn, my mantra) and I collected the audio I needed for one of them with ease.

I had downloaded Audacity mid February to use to edit the files. I watched YouTube Vidoes on using Audacity.

Finally, frustrated, I used a friend's Cool Edit 2000. Using this program, which eventually became Adobe Audition, I was able to create tracks and build my podcast. You are able to down;oad trail versions of Cool Edit however the versions have limited functionality and links to purchase the software do not work, likely due to Adobe's puchase. Cool Edit, however, would only download a WAV file, and I wanted an MP3.

Once again I returned to Audacity, having found new videos that step by step assisted my understanding of using the program.

I loaded the WAV file, and tried to export to an MP3, learning that I needed a LAME download. Despite numerous sources reporting the ease of that process, I was not successful in loading (or finding?) the needed DLL file. Hours have gone by as I have played with making this software work! Thank you, Zamzar, for successfully converting my WAV to MP3.

The learning curve continued as I then realized that Blogger does not host MP3 files! I am incredulous that video was so much simpler than my audio! I followed the lead from a classmate to go to VoiceThreads, and found t I had already used my three free tries. The web is out to get me, keep me quiet, keep me in the dark. I follow Will Richardson's advice to upload my audio to OurMedia.org as it provides "free storage and bandwidth for your .... audio files..." The site will not allow me to register! Eventually, I recollect that Glogster will hold audio files, and am delighted to learn that there is an embed code so I can put it directly on the blog.

There's a Light: It is Getting Brighter and Clearer: Discussion of Podcasting in Terms of My Own Personal Learning

Despite the frustrations of the technical aspects of audio and podcasting, I have gained a great deal of knowledge and understanding through this week.

I slowly, through reading trailfires, texts, interviewing and articles, am beginning to understand that a podcast is closer to radio than my outdated learning cassettes. It involves having a conversation. It is not the straight dissemination of information (MacQuarrie, 2010) as an essay would be or a CD that is designed to impart knowledge on the listener. It requires voice. It requires one to understand the very unique way that good radio reaches and holds its audience. Andy Barry, on the Feb 25 th episode of Anna Maria Tremonti (Part 2 The Current, 25 o2 Andie Barrie), talks about how the listener perceives radio very differently from television. Television is directed to an audience that is usually more than one, and is distant in its connectivity to the viewer. Radio is heard by singular listeners. The mike is kept about the same distance form the broadcaster as would occur in a natural face to face conversation. The resultant feeling is that the radio announcer is talking directly to the listener. It is a personal conversation.

Good podcasting, as a new form of radio, needs to be personal, make the listener feel directly engaged, and do all the things that good radio does. The listener has the choice to turn you on or off, so care has to be taken to engage the listener personally. I am beginning to understand my own preference when listening to radio (CBC over EasyRock) and my preference in most cases for radio over television as I feel more intellectually engaged.

Podcasting is likely to now have me looking a bit like those teenagers hooked up to their earbuds all the time, something I would not have suspected of myself. I've subscribed to a large number of podcasts that have caught my attention and am anxious to listen to them all. From Just One More Book, Coffee Break French, Tech Chick Tips, David Warlick, Grammar girl, SOS Podcast and Radio WillowWeb, I've only just scratched the surface of the opportunities I want to indulge myself with when I have some time. The Education Podcast Network has so many exciting podcasts I want to explore. It is time to dust of my iPod and actually make some use of it!

David Warlick, particularly, models the intimacy I spoke of earlier when he podcasts. I felt he was directly speaking to me so I am more encouraged to continue to listen to his podcasts. As time is always of the essence in a household where one works and takes courses and parents, the on demand characteristic of podcasting has a great appeal. Richardson (2009) speaks about the ease of consumption and the advantages of on demand as opposed to live streaming, stating that it is the distribution of the media that is the huge advantage. I certainly agree as in this modern busy age, I crave information on my own terms.


Discussion of Podcasting in Terms of Teaching and Learning


I am done with aliens, podcasting here I come!
(Jeff Cobb)

This Podcasting Mini Guide title is apropo of how kids learn. Engagement is a key. The boys I taught 20 years ago were caught up in science ficiton and alien characters; the boys today want to have relevant web based tools to express their ideas with and when engaged in the new read / write web, are as absorbed in generative learning as they were absorbed in their fantasy characters. As a teacher it is our responsibility to provide opportunites for this growth, to better prepare the students for the world they will be part of and to teach them to use tools appropriately and safely.



Silvia Tolisano in the LangWitches Blog writes about the process to prepare, plan and create a podcast:

1. Decide what theme/purpose (Interviews, Documentation, Research)

2. Prepare your students (Sound waves, practice, personal voice, expression, segmented audio)

3. Sound Editing Software- How -To Lesson (Record-pause-play-tracks, volume, highlighting, effects)

4. Record audio footage (Introductions, Segment construction)

5. Segments (Assign to different students)

6. Transitions (background music, sound effects

7.Outro (credits)


There are multiple skills gained when students produce a podcast. Besides reinforcing content that hasbeen taught, podcasting is a tool that develops a broad range of skills that reflect learning outcomes across the curriculum. Our students are eager and ready to use these technologies; it is a steeper learning curve for us as teachers to change our thinking and planning to keep up with new opportunities.

In the process of producing the following podcast, students were actively engaged and excited about producing work that they could share. Since pictures and full names are not used, we are able to share the podcast on the web without any FOIPP issues. A second podcast was also in production with a grade four Social Studies class, talking about Alberta's regions, along with a Grade 6 French class, also talking in French about the regions. We were not able to find the time to complete the audio recordings, I will continue this podcast using the students to learn to use Audacity (keeping my fingers crossed!) Next steps: I will be letting the students participate fully with the recording and production; they are already planning for that exciting event.

To listen to our first podcast, about Martin Luther King and creating a podcast, and click on the Player at the top right side of the page.


Unlinked Resources Used

Blackall, L. (Producer) (Retrieved from the World Wide Web: 2010, February 5). Renaming Del.icio.us tags. Podcast retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7amUaTv-S_U

Kretz, Chris. (2007) "Podcasting in Libraries", from Courtney, Nancy, ED.Libraries 2.0 and Beyond, Westport, Connecticut : Libraries Unlimited

Davies, J. & Merchant, G. (2009). Web 2.0 for schools: Learning and social participation. New York, NY: Peter Lang.

DeGroot, Joanne. Podcasting Trailfires.

MacQuarrie, Jim. CBC Producer. Interview, February 24th, 2010

Richardson, W. (2009). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms. 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

From the First Twinges of Love... How Social Bookmarking Relates to the Science of Love.

From Ignorance to Lust: Reflections on the Process of Learning about Social Bookmarking

Falling in love can be a lot like technology. As metaphors go, this might be somewhat oblique... but I can see a lot of connecting points. At first, you glance at someone or something and might think that they look interesting, or perhaps attractive, but often just a passing glance, a twinge of interest, a thought there might be something to be explored.

Eventually, you may be surprised by something that is new and exciting, and, as the Science of Love suggests, (CBC Podcast, Feb 10, 2010) that first stage of lust may set in. You want to learn and spend time and get totally familiar with that new heart in your life. You feel a close connection and want to delve deeper. Surprisingly, you eventually move past that and feel a deeper connection, as there is a world of learning, learning that can become a lifetime of growing. What you learn to deeply love is not always what made that original connection. And there is that moment of making the plunge, of risk as you open yourself to a new way of connecting and growing.

The adventure into social networking, particularly social bookmarking, has felt like that moment when you take the plunge, where you realize that what you knew and loved originally was just that original and somewhat superficial but enjoyable lust… and that there is an entire adventure out there that you had no idea about. This has been a period of recognition that my journey has only just begun and I must be open and ready to meet new challenges head on, apparently for the rest of my life, as I see no sign of this cyber world becoming less important in my future and it is my job, no, my responsibility to open myself up to it.

Social bookmarking was a totally new glimpse for me through January. It was out there, a word, an idea that I did not understand and had never contemplated. Apparently, he had been around for awhile and attracted others’ lust and love, but for me he was just a brief flash, kind of like Edward as he moves through Bella’s first moments as a whisp of wind… hmm, interesting, but a bit dangerous and new and I think I’ll play it safe. If I could carry the analogy further, I would suggest I couldn’t even tell the colour of his hair, much less look into his eyes. As someone who prides themselves in comprehension and technological risk-taking, I was less than comfortable with my total lack of cognition.

Yet, as I caught a bit more of the texture and form, I recognized and connected with a piece of my life. Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to share, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web resources. Organization. Oh yes, the bane of my existence. Was this finally something that would fill that empty hole, make me whole? I am making that first connection. The first twitches of love… lust began.

I am paper phobic. How can anyone work in a school for a gadjillion years and still not be able to manage the paper on their desk? I am an obsessive reader, not a billboard nor a cereal box goes unread, and yet I can never remember the places that ideas have come from nor the finite details of their contents. I have sticky notes everywhere, which I can not find, and when I do, often don’t understand. I have a favorites list that scrolls down forever, some sorted, most not. I have home notes and school notes and the laptop favorites and the political favorites. I visit classrooms and have no idea what my favourites are or where to find that fabulous note about a cyber place I visited. Connection! Electrical sparks fly and I do what great learners do, I connected social bookmarking with my browser favorites. I am in lust. Like Educause’s scenarios about Dr. Smith, (Seven Things You Should know About Social Bookmarking) I used folders to organize bookmarks, but it is inefficient, there are multiple folders, on different machines, and googling is easier but unreliable. I am not able to share, much less remember!

I read all the Trailfires, I read Merchant and Davies, and I read Richardson. I watch YouTechTips on YouTube. Tagging is the practice and method of collaboratively creating and managing tags to annotate and categorize content. I begin to understand that there are new ways of grouping and sharing and finding information. Delicious was the first to invent tags, and I learn that this new flirt of mine, social bookmarking, whom I really don't yet understand, has been hanging around since 1996! Why could I not have met him earlier?

After joining both Diigo, Delicious and iCyte, and reading about the data loss of Magnolia, I began the journey with bookmarking the trailfires on Delicious! A novel concept, I can now find all of the links Joanne gifted us with by going to Delicious. I can find them at home, I can find them at school, I can find them even when Blackboard isn’t working for me. This is better than human love; heck, it is there whenever and where ever I want this. I want it! And I can find it! No hidden liaisons for this love, it is there for me anywhere. Oh, yes, just like first love, do I really WANT it all the time? I back away, I play it safe, I retreat to some things I am more sure of. Will it betray me and turn out to be less than I hope?

I learn that I can download my favourites to Delicious bookmarks! Lust grows, and I download all 250 some-odd favourites from school. Sobering thought, I now needed to go and make these bookmarks shareable, (unlock them) and I have a chance to reconnect with things I’ve added to favourites at school for 8 years. I edit, I share, I delete, I add. I’m compulsive and want to impress my new lover, who is Delicious. I start unlocking things one by one, spending hours, and then watch Leigh Blackall's video, Renaming Delicious Tags. I love my lover so much I decide I need to talk about him and share him with others. (Sound familiar? Lust is very powerful!) Using best practices from teaching, I know that I learn best what I teach others, so incorporate bookmarking into a cooperative teaching unit.

I eventually realize that I can network, and try that. Sadly, it seems that everyone has so many different logins and names that I can only find two friends to share these bookmarks. Not everyone hears about my new lover. I learn to send bookmarks to my students' Delicious account. Eventually I totally overwhelm my browser page with toolbars and sidebars.

I have seen tag clouds before and lose several days trying add a cloud of my many new bookmarks onto my blog. I want to have a widget, put it in the side, so it doesn't disappear further and further down the page. I look through blogger, I look at colleagues web pages, and finally I settle on a post. I loose many hours working on this. Low and behold, I have 100 tags showing and I learn to edit the html code (Paul, you would be proud of me!) to show the top 50.

I did explored similar platforms but my first encounter was with Delicious, and just like in love, I looked around to see what the choices were. Perhaps unfortunately, I am monogamous and although I discovered that Diigo had more bells and whistles (sticky notes, highlighting, full page saving rather than just the url,) I’m a loyal kinda gal and stuck to my first love. I’ve found that I prefer the simpler kind of option in life. I just don’t have the time or interest to play around with two guys at once, although I did do the looking. I know that two can be just as exciting as one in this world, but I just can't do it. (Just looking can’t be all bad with love, right?)

Falling in Love with the Familiar: Discussion of Social Bookmarking in Terms of My Own Personal Learning

Every love has connections to what has been in your past. In the early 1980’s, I was an educational risk-taker, automating my school library. Eventually, I travelled and helped others learn to do likewise. Mainly a self trained A-Type kind of person, I struggled with Sears versus actual library needs. My grassroots training knew I could not deviate from SEARS List, my card typing-cross referencing anal retentive personality knew this, but I confess that, given the search capability of an online system, I added subject headings that fit our schools need (aka local tags). This was my deepest secret which I finally share, like an addict who eventually confesses. More than that, I shared this strategy as an automation consultant (often saying, “Don’t tell anyone I said this but you actually CAN add subject headings (tags) where you want.”) No one will catch you, no one will fire you, everyone will thank you that YOU CAN finally find the prescribed resources for your curriculum in your library.)

I believe that Folksomony is an idea that has its roots in the thinking that emerged in the 1980’s when many of us saw the need to understand ourselves socially and collectively rather than as a set of rules. I was not the only person who questioned the dynamics of systems that limited connective language in libraries (Sears) and the emerging learning world. Glimpsing into our future, we will see so many cross-relationships between programs and language and searching that our entire world of knowledge will open up for using ways we cannot imagine.

I only began my lusty relationship with bookmarks when I saw a connection to my own life and confusion (my favourites buttons). I imagine that finding that personal connection is what opened the doors for me; this will be critical to remember when I share this with teachers who see no connections yet with their world.

Without a doubt, there are challenges with tagging and folksomony. One of the problems is the lack of standardization, a problem I quickly noticed with my own tags. It suggests a need to, at least as a professional, recognize and utilize some standard headings. I struggled with whether I should use “Social_Studies” or “socialstudies” or "social studies" as I created tags for students to follow. To make them accessible in my own site is possible and attainable, to make them available to others in my network and the world creates problem in consistency .

EveryJoe talks about The Several Habits of Wildly Successful Delicious Users.

1. Make Marks (Done, and must continue)

2. Tag (Done, need 'cleaning and continuation)

3. Use Inbox (Tried and will continue)

4. Mix and Match (Done, a bit of Boolean searching)

5. Stalk (Got to get to this one)

6. Let it Go (RSS Feed) Tag Cloud but can do more)

7. Move it Around (Got to get to this one)

8. Explore More. (The love continues)

Learning about Social Bookmarking at first overwhelmed me and I still feel that like any love, there is more still to learn than I know now. As well, it will be constantly changing. Somehow, stickys have started to appear on my Delicious account, when I believed they were only available on Diigo! I will have to commit to this relationship and keep building from the strong basis I'm developing. That's how love works. You can never be complacent!

Sharing the love: Discussion of Social Bookmarking in Terms of Teaching and Learning

When we make connections with our lives, our world and with media, ideas grow. I find my teaching style leads me to share things that excite me. Division two students know little about the Read / Write Web, often having limited and controlled access to the web, often without an email address. Things I am learning are foreign to them and yet they will be the users and builders of these social communities. I find sharing my learning with them excites them about the possibilities of the Internet beyond the game playing / word processing world they know. Teaching them the skills that I am learning is a double-edged sword: I get to try out and therefore stand a chance of remembering a skill, and they learn something powerful and new and productive. They are engaged.

My new cooperative unit with a grade 4/5 Social class on Canadian Stories from our Past was the perfect opportunity to share my love of bookmarking. It quickly changed its introductory focus to a social bookmarking theme. Room_fifteen is our newest social bookmarking Delicious member. We made mistakes, and explored the tool together. Prior to researching, students were required to open Delicious and add their bookmarks. The shared class login seems to be working; students add their websites, tag it with topic relevant tags, and add their names so the teacher and I can check where they are going and the resources they are using. Classmates can see what other tags have been created. My lust / new love is shared with 29 students and a teacher. The teacher is a-gogged with learning a new way of sharing and emails the principal with how much SHE is learning.. Eventually, I add bookmarks myself in my Delicious account and send these to the room_fifteen account. Lust deepens. Next lesson, they will build the tags and bookmarks and see that they have mail in their inbox!

Teachers are often lost. If I am feeling like this is new, and I am the ‘tech expert’, how do teachers feel? Think Like a Teacher, addresses this, comparing her inability to see in 3-d and feeling left out to how learning disabled students feel when we talk about ideas they cannot fathom, to teachers who feel left behind in a technological age. You can't be my teacher addresses rather precociously how students feel being left behind in a digital age. The balance between where the students exist and where most teachers exists is a conundrum we must address in education, both through technological upgrading (financial resources) and through professional development (both human and financial resources).

My school is involved in a large project to provide ongoing, intensive professional development to teachers to address this gap in age and ability however it often has provided moments of unequivocal stress to our teachers rather than strategies to move foreword. It is a bit like when a new lover takes over your life so completely that you need do back off and say no, I am me and I am not ready to make you my everything, my total life. Make me meet you in small steps, make me learn to love you piece by piece. I can’t give you everything… if not I am gone. We need to find the connections that will build theri desire to move forward, not retreat.

Teaching Today suggests that there are three powerful reasons to use bookmarking in the classroom, including classroom management, (ease of sharing and changing computers to retrieve information) collaboration (sharing bookmarks) and news (catheterizing news feeds so that important current events can retrieved easily). The potential to use librarything.com to build an online catalog is so very exciting that it sends love shivers up my spine! I know that the power it would have for students is incredible.

Despite the challenges, the accessibility / retrievablility of information and the shared communities and networks that are created outweigh the challenges in my opinion. Social bookmarking allows us to read and connect with others with what others read as well (Richardson 2009) and builds our access to information and our PLN. We can find others who have bookmarked the same sites, you can find who has bookmarked your site, you can retrieve materials with the same tags and locate others who have similar interests and ideas. The potential to work collaboratively in your school or further educational community and share resources is limitless. As an aggregator of ideas, social bookmarking tools are unparalleled.

I am in the nether lands of moving from lust to love. Don’t misinterpret my feelings, I am one of those who grasp hold of the potential and strive to make it my own true being. I save lust for the important and I believe social bookmarking deserves a brilliantly strong place in this emotional stratosphere. There is so much to learn and discover. I feel I have dived into a world that was invisible in my past, an idea that had no real form. Ahead of me there is a wealth to learn, and a whole new way of interacting with information. I love the medium as it is safe and it is growth orientated and I can use it to build my connections and links with the world. Besides allowing my students to share bookmarks on research topics, we can subscribe to RSS feeds and receive updates. I can build professional networking. The potential to collaborate with other schools particularly in our Technology Without Borders Project, is exciting. I have no fear of sharing this with my students, I believe this relationship is a safe learning haven for them, too!

Untagged Resources Used

Blackall, L. (Producer) (Retrieved from the World Wide Web: 2010, February 5). Renaming Del.icio.us tags. Podcast retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7amUaTv-S_U

Davies, J. & Merchant, G. (2009). Web 2.0 for schools: Learning and social participation. New York, NY: Peter Lang.

Darrow, Rob. California Dreamin’ (Retrieved from the World Wide Web: 2010, February 5) http://www.icyte.com/saved/robdarrow.wordpress.com/87245%202019

DeGroot, Joanne. Social Bookmarking Trailfires.

McNeely, Ben. Using Technology as a learning tool, Not Just a Cool New thing (2010, February 13)http://www.educause.edu/Resources/EducatingtheNetGeneration/UsingTechnologyasaLearningTool/6060

Put a Delicious Tag in Blog (Retreived from the World Wide Web: 2010, February 3) http://tips.blogdoctor.me/2009/04/put-delicious-tag-cloud-in-blog.html

Richardson, W. (2009). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms. 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Nancy's Delicious Tags

TagCrowd - make your own tag cloud from any text

TagCrowd - make your own tag cloud from any text

Listen to the voice of a digital native

Creativity in Education - TED

Anything from TED is worthy of my time but this has struck me as an impartant message to teachers everywhere.

I Need My Teachers to Learn

A WONDERFUL catchy song about changing how we think about teaching.

10 Reasons to Use YouTube Videos in the Classroom