Area 3 Writing Project Blog

Good morning and welcome to Going Live with Blogging. Your first step in entering the blogosphere is to take a moment and think about how blogs and blogging might help teachers.  How about students?

What challenges, possibilities, and opportunities do you face when, like this group in the photo below who  also crossed centuries, you leave our week-long institute and return to your own classrooms?

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Welcome to our podcasting workshop! As we explore resources, ideas, and uses for podcasting, please jot down (via comments to this post) your thoughts, questions, and suggestions for adding this Web 2.0 tool into your teaching practice.

Let’s start with some of the tools you will need:

• Sound editing software: Audacity, a free download. Here is a link to downloading instructions for both Audacity and the Lame encoder file.
• A microphone: Purchasing a microphone will be your only expense. There’s a good chance the built in mic on your computer will not be adequate for a quality production, but check it out before purchasing mics. You can go high-end with a Snowball microphone or take a trip to Radio Shack, Best Buy, etc. , and find one for under $10.
• Someplace (server space) to host your podcast: For today’s workshop, we’ll be demonstrating how to upload your podcasts to Edublogs.org, the wonderful, wonderful, free blogging program for educators. During our summer workshop, we’ll introduce you to the California K12 High Speed Network’s edZone, with its unlimited storage space for teachers, as well as Gcast, which enables you to podcast from your cell phone.
• Copyright-free music: If you would like to add music for your intro/outro, sites such as Freeplaymusic.com and Jamendo offer free downloads. Be sure to check out Terms of Agreement for any copyright-free/royalty free sites.

Here are some additional resources from CLRN’s Brian Bridges:

• Adjusting Sound Settings
• Podcasting Resources and Websites

If you have podcasting resources you recommend I add to the sidebar under Podcasting, please let me know.

Thank you for joining us today!

*Note: Podcast image copied from http://webtools4u2use.wikispaces.com