Podcasting And Videoblogging
Izvor: ELAWiKi
Sadržaj |
A caution: on the nature of time and sound
An Audioblogging Manifesto, Maciej Ceglowski -- "I demand four minutes and twenty seconds of your life..." MP3, text
"...the average person speaks at one hundred, perhaps one hundred fifty words per minute. Meanwhile, an accomplished reader can read ten times faster - up to a thousand words a minute, and that's straight-up reading, not even skimming. You're forcing people to listen to you at a speed that's barely faster than the speed at which they can type. Why are you wasting their time? Is your voice really that beautiful?"
No shortage of fun examples at Radio Willow Web, like this one.
Gardner Campbell... On the relation between radio communication and teaching (1.6MB MP3, 1:45) -- "You have to think you are speaking to everyone, and one person at the same time..."
Educational justifications from Steve Sloan
- for distance learning
- to facilitate self-paced learning
- for re-mediation of slower learners
- to allow faculty to offer advanced and or highly motivated learners extra content
- for helping students with reading and/or other disabilities
- for multi-lingual education
- to provide the ability for educators to feature guest speakers from remote locations
- to allow guest speakers the ability to present once to many sections and classes
- to allow educators to escape the tedium of lecturing
- to offer a richer learning environment
Most educational podcast initiatives have concentrated on capturing and distributing lectures. Not a bad idea, but it would be a shame if that were the end of it.
We have interviewed a few of our colleagues at UBC and collected them on this page. A couple clips from Tannis Morgan:
Background
People have been posting audio to the net forever (at least, as measured in web time). What's new about podcasting to justify this hype? Think of podcasting as analagous to what weblogs and wikis are to text publishing.
- The tools have gotten cheaper, and easier. All the software you need can easily be picked up for free (or cheaply).
- Bandwidth and hardware has also gotten cheaper. And the rise of iPods and other portable digital music players has been key.
- As with weblogs, RSS has allowed personally-produced audio to be syndicated and disseminated with unprecedented power and ease.
- As with weblogs, the above factors means that a whole new wave of participants have joined the party. That's when things really get interesting.
Listening to podcasts:
| We'll be demonstrating iTunes today, which works very well as a podcatcher.
Links to more tools for listening to podcasts are available at Reel Reviews Radio, including iPodder and iPodderX. If you are only an occasional listener, you can usually listen to a podcast by clicking a link in your web browser. Some podcast sources:
|
Creating Podcasts
| Here we truly enter the dark arts. There are options that let you record podcasts with nothing but a phone, and that will handle the whole process for free (Odeo] seems to have established itself as the early leader on this end, from the creators of Blogger.
HardwareYou can capture hardware with your laptop or any computer with a soundcard and microphone. From there you can go as as deep as you wish. We're going to steer clear of hardware for now. If you plan to do a lot of recording, you might consider upgrading your microphone. USB microphones work well with both PCs and Macs, and start at around sixty bucks. RecordingCommon sense considerations apply. Try to find a quiet place -- unless background noise is what you want. Think about what you are trying to capture. Recording single or a small number of speakers is easier than capturing a room. Trial and error is the best way to learn. |
Using Audacity
http://www.agnula.org/documentation/dp_tutorials/audacity/images/audacity-2_small.jpg
Audacity is a popular, open-source, cross-platform recorder, editor and mixer. It is hardly the best tool on the market, but it is free, relatively easy to use, and surprisingly powerful.
We will be lasting through this, and there will undoubtedly be questions that remain -- suggested tutorials include:
- Daniel James's Audacity Tutorial -- includes some sample files. This one is especially good.
- Audacity wiki - very comprehensive and detailed.
Capturing a sound
Let's start by getting a source file. Just capture a few seconds of your voice.
- Open Audacity. Select New.
- It should be set to the "default input source".
- Click the "record button" and say a few things, wait a second, say something else, pause again, and speak again. Is your recording generating waveforms in the interface?
- Play it back. Save your project.
Basic sound editing
Now, let's import a track. Download one of the following tracks to your desktop - [cntl-click, save-as] (If you added the workshop feed to iTunes, they might be on your machine already.)
If you have or know of another short clip (MP3, 30 seconds or less) you are welcome to use it instead.
In Audacity
- Under Project, select Import Audio
- Select the audio file you saved to the desktop.
Now the fun begins...
Time permitting, we will explore mixing levels, cutting, silencing, splicing, and synching. There is not enough time for a proper overview, so we recommend you look at the tutorials above.
Uploading and syndicating your files
When you have completed your masterwork, save it again. If you have the LAME MP3 plugin installed with Audacity, select **File** and **Export as MP3** as options. If you do not have a plugin, **export as WAV** file, hopefully it will be under 5MB. Export file to your desktop.
Login at: http://weblogs.elearning.ubc.ca/login (username and password to be revealed in-session)
- From the Movable Type weblog entry interface, select **upload file**. - Select your podcast from the desktop. - When asked, select **create new entry**. - **Add a title** to your post, explanatory text (optional), and **select the "Podcast" category** from the drop-down menu (optional). - Hit save.
Weblog viewable at: http://weblogs.elearning.ubc.ca/objects/ Podcast feed: http://weblogs.elearning.ubc.ca/objects/index.xml
More reading and resources on podcasting
- Gardner Campbell, There's Something in the Air, a very rich article
- Alan Levine, Podcasting on the Cheap, an excellent collection of links and resources
An introduction to videoblogging
http://andheblogs.andyrush.net/wp-content/photos/easy_free.jpg
Screenshot above taken from Andy Rush's short and worthy tutorial.
Videoblogging, or vlogging is the newest of the media forms we will be exploring during this workshop. Although online video has been around for some time, the past year has seen the emergence of simple tools that allow anyone to upload, post and reuse video.
The two services which have done the most to popularize videoblogging are Google Video and YouTube.
Both services have become wildly popular for their mix of copyright-violating clips submitted by users, and amateur video of wildly varying styles and quality.
See Gardner Campbell's Surprised by YouTube for an example of how this form is already having an impact on the classroom.
Activity: Take a few minutes to explore Google Video and YouTube. When you find a video you like, use the "embed code" provided on each video's page to post an entry to your weblog. Who can find the best video?
Discussion: Now that you have explored these new multimedia forms, do you see applications for education that justify the hype? What are the strengths and weaknesses of these tools?
Login at http://weblogs.elearning.ubc.ca/cgi-bin/mt.cgi
username: objectseh password: canada
See what got posted at: http://weblogs.elearning.ubc.ca/objects/
