Social Bookmarking in Plain English

Remember the RSS Feed YouTube video I showed during the Institute? The same person has created a tutorial on social bookmarking. I'm sharing it with you for two reasons. First, it is a very persuasive piece on using social bookmarks. Second, it shows once again the best practice of organizing content for viewers (one of our jobs in audio and/or video podcasting).



What do you think? Are you using del.icio.us?

Bibliography

I promised to compile a bibliography on podcasting and here are a few of my favorites (with links to Amazon):

• Podcasting Bible by Steve Mack and Mitch Ratcliffe, Wiley Pub., 2007. 978-0-470-04352-3. This is an excellent introduction to all aspects of audio and video podcasting.
• Podcasting for Teachers by Kathleen P. King and Mark Gura, IAP - Information Age Publishing, 2007. 978-1-59311-659-0. This is geared towards K12 but it emphasizes instructional design and also provides examples of student projects.
• Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms by Will Richardson, Corwin Press, 2006. 1-4129-2767-6. Lots of excellent ideas in this book and a chapter on getting started with RSS.
• Hands-On-Guide to Video Blogging & Podcasting by Lionel Felix and Damien Stolarz, Focal Press, 2006. 978-0-240-80831-4. Another good overview of podcasting, vodcasting and blogging.

Rick's recommendation is:

• Audio in Media by Stanley Allen, Wadsworth Pub., 2007. 978-0495095682

Julius Armstrong

Julius and Sally Green worked together to create "Radcasts" - a new series of podcasts for their Radiation Therapy students.

Project links:

• Dress Code (3:08 minutes) Transcript (PDF format)
• Clinical Behavior (4:13 minutes) Transcript (PDF format)

Michael Caldero

This is a placeholder for Michael's project.

Jeff Curtis

My name is Jeff Curtis and I have taught diesel equipment technology at Bellingham Technical College for 14 years. My interests include student learning and how we can include the use of technology to promote that learning.

We are both blessed and cursed at BTC. The blessing is that we have such a forward thinking faculty and supportive administration to adapt to new technologies. We are cursed because there really isn’t an organized support network for others to access.

Project link: Essential autoshop101.com navigation (1:56 minutes)

Carol Forte

Carol is a career consultant in the Center for Career Connections at Bellevue Community College. She is also an instructor in the Arts & Humanities Division and teaches a course on learning portfolio fundamentals. In this course, she will be teaching an eportfolio system in addition to the process of portfolio development to students enrolled in the elementary education transfer degree program.

Carol teaches a non-credit career development course called Building a New Career & Life in Continuing Education Division. Her podcasting plans include: creating podcasts for the career center as a way of introducing basic career-related topics, such as choosing a career, finding a job, describing our services,or announcing career events on campus; creating podcasts to supplement her course materials on portfolio development; and creating podcasts to supplement her course materials in her career development course.

Project links:

• Career Café Podcast 1 - How Long Should Your Résumé Be? (1:39 minutes), Transcript (PDF format)
• Career Café Podcast 2 - Resume Objective (3:24 minutes), Transcript (PDF format)
  

Sally Green

Julius Armstrong and Sally worked together to create "Radcasts" - a new series of podcasts for their Radiation Therapy students.

Project files:

• Dress Code (3:08 minutes) Transcript (PDF format)
• Clinical Behavior (4:13 minutes) Transcript (PDF format)

Robert Hughes

Robert Hughes has been a computer technology and graphic communications instructor at Clark College in Vancouver, Wa for the past 14 years. He had the good fortune to be a part of the instructional team that created Internet related curriculum at Clark, which at that time, had one of the first community college Internet Nodes in the country. He sees his instructional mission as doing whatever is possible to give students access to and an understanding of digital technology with the belief that access and knowledge will give them multiudes of opportunity.

His projects for the workshop were a prototype podcast study guide and a podcast of some of his favorite summer festival music, the latter gave him an opportunity to get experience managing and editing a number of files in a podcast creation environment as well as a chance to share his passion for music with others on the Internet.Project Links:

• Exam Review for CTEC 101 (4:39 minutes)
• TheFestQuest Podcast Episode 1 (34:46 minutes)
  

Gregory Jackson

I am currently a BIT Instructor at Cascadia Community College in Bothell Wa. Autocad was my entry into the IT Industry when IBM 286’s were the standard and networking was none existent. I developed Architectural and Engineering plans but didn’t enjoy sitting in a cubical 8 hours a day 5 days a week. In 1997 I got A+ Certified and began teaching computer repair and networking. Since then I have design and build more than a hundred networks and taught at 4 Community Colleges in the Seattle area.
Project link:

• Entering Heaven's Gate Episode 1 (1:53 minutes)

Asha Nelson

This is a placeholder for Asha's bio and project.

Enrique Olguin

Enrique Olguin, Ph.D. teaches ethnic studies and political science at North Seattle CC. He has been active in exploring multimedia applications for instruction since 1994, when he participated n a joint CTC-Boeing Project in this area. Enrique uses a huge amount of video, photos and sounds in his classroom teaching, and multimedia seems an efficient way to integrate these materials. I am now working on podcasting as a way to continue this media integration, as well as to extend my students’ access to curriculum.

Project links -

• Introduction to American Government Podcast #1 (3:04 minutes)
• Talking tips for the podcasting track (2:02 minutes), Transcript (PDF format)
  

Earl Steele

Bellingham Technical College

I teach the Fisheries Technology Program and run the Whatcom Creek Hatchery which releases about 3 million salmon and trout annually. I started the program and have taught 28 years. I also do some consulting work and have an oyster and clam farm in Hood Canal. I have commercial fished for salmon, crab, prawns, and bottom fish in Washington and Alaska for over 30 years. I have a BS Degree from the University of Washington.

I did 3 projects. I did 2 that used slides and another short video clip.

Project Links:

• Salmon Identification - Video iPod Version, MP3 Version, Transcript (2:52 minutes)
  
• Spawning Salmon - Video iPod Version
• Carrying three salmon - Video iPod Version
  

Maggie Stuart

Hi, I’m Maggie Stuart, a Computer Science instructor at Lower Columbia College in Longview, Washington, currently working on a variety of special campus projects, in addition to my teaching responsibilities. In my spare time, I am a doctoral student at Oregon State University.

My podcasting project is a collection of podcasts that will be used in an introductory networking course.

Project Links-

• 211 Times - Edition 1 (2:41 minutes) Edition 1 Transcript (PDF format)

• 211 Times - Edition 2 (2:47 minutes) Edition 2 Transcript (PDF format)

Tim Trussler

Tim Trussler is a Microsoft Office instructor at Bates Technical College, as well as an ABE/GED instructor. Additionally, he is a computer instructor for staff development and continuing education. He also works with program development for the Job Readiness Training Center at Bates. He has been employed at Bates for 3 years, and has been in the educational field for nearly 20 years. He has taught in various settings, including colleges, for-profit organizations, non-profit organizations, and para-school institutions.

Tim's first blog is the GED podcast blog. Here is the link.

http://warringwithtrolls.blogspot.com/

Putting Power Point into MovieMaker

Jeff found a good tutorial on creating a narrated PowerPoint presentation using Windows MovieMaker. I can also help with this and Earl is working on his second or third project now.



Enjoy and thanks, Jeff

Day 3 - Distributing your podcast

To review, so far you have planned, produced, and encoded your podcast. But, you're not quite done yet. The final step is distributing it.

Your podcast and transcript files must be placed on a web server. You can't easily share what you've done without getting your files on the web. The rest of these instructions assume you've gotten your files online.

There are three basic ways to distribute your podcasts.

1. Create a web page for podcasts in your web site or in your LMS account. Add a link for each podcast (and transcript) you produce. Go to the SCCD Faculty Development Podcast Page for an example.

2. Use a blog to post your podcasts and transcripts. You can easily add images and brief show notes in your blog posting. Go to the SCCD Faculty Development Blog for an example.

3. Sign up for a podcasting service like PodOmatic or LibSyn. Just to let you know, I signed up for a PodOmatic account last night and I really didn't like the results. Office Depot was at the top of the web page for my podcast. There wasn't a way to post a transcript. I canceled my account so no preview is available.

By now you all know that I'm hoping you'll use a blog for posting your podcast and transcript.

The final step is setting up an RSS Feed. The easiest way to do this is to use FeedBurner. Pages 28 - 32 in the track handout show all the steps for using FeedBurner. I also found a short movie that you might want to watch.

I have one more important Web 2.0 tool called PageFlakes that I want to show you on Thursday. I believe it shows the true power of RSS and having information brought to you. I'm in love with my PageFlakes.

Gotta get some sleep now but I'm psyched about all the progress you've made so far.

What makes a good podcast?

Here are the ideas we came up during our discussion on what makes a good podcast.

• Music - for branding, to add interest, and to add production value
• Short intro (too long and we get bored)
• Relevance to listener so they know whether it's worth their while to listen
  
• Add interactivity
• Clear focus at the beginning
• Clear explanations
• Benefits for listening
• Use "show notes" with images
• Include the length of the episode in show notes
• Length 1 - 10 minutes
• Use an "outro" (wrap-up or ending)
• Make sure your personality comes through
• Make an emotional connection

I noticed that these ideas were similar to the ones listed in both the evaluation guides I distributed. If you want your own electronic copy, I've linked them below:
Kathy Schrock's Guide for Educators
Evaluating podcast for teaching and learning

Some Useful Definitions

Let's start out Wednesday morning making sure we are all working with the same definitions for some key terms.

Podcast - What is a podcast and how does it work? or, if you prefer, Ask a Ninja

Blog - Definition from Wikipedia

Podcatcher - A good definition from ParkCast.com

RSS Feed - RSS in Plain English by CommomCraft

I'm also recommending that you check out TeacherTube at http://www.teachertube.com. I found some good "how to" presentation on using Blogger and saw some amazing examples of how blogs are being used in the K12 environment.

See our room and grab the handout for the podcasting track

I spent a couple hours making sure our room and computers will work well tomorrow. Many thanks to Jeremy Strong, IT Staff at BCC, who has gotten everything ready for us. I used my cell phone to shoot a quick movie (so the quality is not so great) and posted it to YouTube. Click on the arrow to watch it.



I've also completed the handout for tomorrow. You can preview it by clicking on the link below:

Creating Your First Podcast Handout (pdf)

See you tomorrow!

Jeff Curtis Shares a TeacherTube Video

If you have time (7:41 minutes), please watch this Pay Attention video from TeacherTube that Jeff Curtis shared with me. Click on the play button to view it.

Jeff, who is a diesel instructor at Bellingham Technical College, also sent a link to a podcast interview with one of his colleagues, Tony Kuphaldt. The interview is based on a paper Tony wrote about integrating active learning into his teaching. Here is a link to his paper: If I Had Wanted to Study, I Would Have Gone to a Real College. I highly recommend listening to the interview (49:36 minutes) and reading the paper.

Thanks so much, Jeff for sharing these links with me and now the rest of the Podcast Track participants.

Podcasting Kits

One of the things we'll be discussing next week (8/21 - 8/24 2007) is podcasting equipment. While I was Faculty Development Coordinator for the Seattle Community Colleges, we purchased podcasting kits for the FD Office and each of the campuses. We purchased them from BSW for about $250.

We soon realized that we needed to create instructions for using them and Geoff Mathay and I filmed some short videos that show the contents of the kit, how to connect all the pieces and how to set and use the controls on the mixer. I made a short video using Camtasia that shows how to select the microphone from the podcasting kit before recording with Audacity.

I produced them as Vodcasts (video podcasts) and they can be viewed by clicking on the links below. If your computer doesn't know which media player to use, I recommend you select QuickTime. And you can put them on your video iPod, too, of course!

Part 1 - Contents of the kit
Part 2 - Connecting all the pieces
Part 3 - Setting the controls (volume, etc.)
Part 4 - Selecting the microphone before recording with Audacity

What do you think? Was this a good way to show faculty how to use the podcasting kits?

Does Podcasting Improve Student Learning?

This is an important question for those who have signed up for the Creating Your First Podcast track at the Institute. I recently found an excellent white paper, published by Ashley Deal in the Office of Technology for Educators & Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence at Carnegie-Mellon University. If at all possible, I would encourage you to read this before the Institute begins.

The paper discusses three common uses for podcasts: delivering lectures, creating supplemental learning materials, and giving podcasting assignments to students.

While students reported liking the lecture podcasts, there is no evidence that providing them improves student learning. But, they are the easiest type of podcast to produce.

Podcasts that offer supplemental learning content, when designed with clear educational outcomes in mind, did seem to positively influence learning outcomes. These types of podcasts take more time to plan and produce.

Having students create podcasts is another topic we should discuss during the Institute. As the paper points out, this can be a way to get students really involved in your class.

Click on the link below to read the article.

Podcasting White Paper (PDF)