Week 4: Project development

(January 31st-February 6th)

This week, we will learn more about podcasting in the language classroom, exploring more web-based podcast services, designing blogs for the podcasting fair.




Podcasting in the language classroom

1. Go to our weekly reading blog.
2. Read the articles recommended for Week 4, make reflections on the readings and answer the quiz.
3. Participate in the forum and post your comments at the bottom of the page. 








Becoming familiar with more Podcast web-based services
During week 2, you became familiar with Podomatic and Podbean. This week you will explore Audioboo, Vocaroo and Chirbit.


Audioboo: Who is this?
Audioboo is a mobile and web platform that allows you to upload or record audio. The recording limit is 5 minutes. If you´d like more,  you`d have to sign up for a pro-service. Watch the tutorial and learn how to use it.



Task 
1. Sign up to Audioboo 
2. Record an audio about a mystery person (similar to what is shown in the video). Don´t give away that much! Let your colleagues guess who you are talking about. 
3. Embed this Audioboo in your blog. 
4. Share the Audioboo link in our Yahoo group
a. Click on "Add a link"  
b. In Title type “My Audioboo mystery person” 
c. In Description, write your name  
d. In URL, paste your Audioboo URL.  

Guess your colleague´s mystery person 
5. Listen to one or two of your colleagues´description. 
6. In post, write yoour guess about this mystery person.

Vocaroo: Getting to know the moderators

Even though it looks like just a voice mail, it is more than that. You can not only send an audio to someone to his/her email, you can embed and download this audio. As in Audioboo, you only have 5 minutes for your recording. An interesting feature of Vocaroo is that you don´t have to sign up to send a message. For our session, you will do so, though. Watch this tutorial:


Task: 
1. Sign up to Vocaroo. 
2. Record a question you would like to ask to your moderators. 
3. Send it to their emails (Evelyn: evelyn.izquierdo@gmail.com; José: puentesalmundo@gmail.com; Miguel: mmendoza97@gmail.com
4. Embed this Vocaroo audio in your blog. 
5. Share the Vocaroo link in our Yahoo group: 
a. Click on "Add a link
b. In Title type “My Vocaroo recording” 
c. In Description, write your name 
d. In URL, paste your Vocaroo URL.

Chirtbit. Tongue-twister
Chirbit also allows you to record or upload an audio , but it has got some other interesting features like Text to Speech recordings that you may find useful for your class. Watch this tutorial:


Task 
1. Sign up to Chirbit.
2. Record a tongue twister. 
3. In title, type the tongue twister (as shown in the turorial). 
4. Save it.
5. Embed this Chirbirt in your blog.
6. Share the Chirbit link in our Yahoo group:
a. Click on "Add a link".
b. In Title  type “My Chirbit recording” 
c. In Description, write your name 
d. In URL, paste your Chirbit URL.

Here´s a summary of the podcast web-based services and free software we have used so far and more. Explore them and consider their teaching/learning potential in class.


 
 




Adding information to your blog 

In week 2, you created a blog in Blogger and added three pages to this blog. Now you will add information to each one of them. Here´s what each page should have:

Page 1: About me
Write a brief description about what you do as a teacher, where you work and any other information you would like to share about this. Also, you will add some extra information about yourself and embed your glog to this page. (Follow the example in the tutorial)

Page 2: My podcasts
Embed all the podcasts you have recorded so far. These are:
1. Audio recorded in Audacity and uploaded to Podbean
2. Description of a picture recorded in Podomatic.
3. Interview recorded with MP3 Skype Recorder or Call recorder.
4. Description of a mystery person recorded in Audioboo.
5. Question asked to moderators recorded in Vocaroo
6. Tongue twister recorded in Chirbit.

Page 3: My Podcast Project
You can describe the project as shown in the picture below (click on the image to enlarge)


 You can download this podcast plan here.

Watch the tutorial showing you the suggested layout, organization and content. It also suggests how to add information to pages.




Optional: This tutorial will show you how to design and add a banner to your blog. To do so, you will need to login to Pixlr. Just click on Open Image Editor and start designing your banner.



Podcasts EFL samples recorded by José Rodríguez and his students

Listen to some podcasts recorded by José Rodríguez and his students. They can inspire you for the projects you are going to carry out. What do you think about these podcasts?


 




1. read the required articles for Week 4, taken quiz and participated in forum.
2. recorded audio with Audioboo, Vocaroo and Chirbits.
3. sent Vocaroo audio to moderators.
4. replied to colleagues´ recordings with Audioboo and Chirbits.
5. added content to blog.
6. written detailed description about podcast project.
7. attended or watched the live session.

Note: You can write questions or comments about this week below.





Fourth Live Session - Week 4 meeting on WiZiQ

6 comments:

  1. Hi,

    Once again, I've enjoyed the tasks that have been set, and am even starting to feel like a bit of an old hand at podcasting.

    One problem that just won't go away though is difficulty with the online recording tools used at Vocaroo, Audioboo and Chirbits. I get a popup from the Adobe Flash Player Settings asking for permission to access camera and microphone. Problem is, nothing happens when I try to click on 'Allow'.

    Searching for solutions gave this Adobe Flash Player page http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager06.html where you can input settings for specific webpages. I've managed to get it so that I can now record a Chirbit (yay!!), but it hasn't resolved the issue on Vocaroo or Audioboo.

    I'm on a Mac OS X Tiger using Firefox. Changing the browser to Opera didn't help, but switching to Windows did. Trouble was, my mic is set up for Mac and so the sound quality on the Vocaroo recording was truly appalling!

    Not really after a solution as I can workaround the issue. More interesting would be to hear if others are having similar issues with these online Flash Player recording tools.

    - Mods, feel free to relocate this message over to the Yahoo group if you want to :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi. Chris. MAybe this will help:
    "If you’re having issues with Flash apps (like our live stream), this thread in Adobe’s forums may surface a solution for you.

    According to my friend Gyula Feher at Ustream.tv: “We have a good reason to think that the problem is caused by a Leopard-specific bug of the latest r115 Mac version of Adobe Flash Player. The reason why it got triggered by the 10.5.2 update is because 10.5.2 also upgraded Flash Player. Forum posts indicate that downgrading to a recent (r47) version of Flash Player fixes the issue. Download the older version of Flash Player 9 from Adobe and install r47. Following the downgrade, you may check your Flash Version by right-clicking on any Flash widget and selecting ‘About Flash Player’ from the menu.”

    http://chris.pirillo.com/flash-player-problems-in-mac-os-x/

    ReplyDelete
  3. hi miguel
    i am really fascinated by all that i have learned over such a short space of time.

    i have a problem though i am not able to embed my glog so that it looks like the one on your blog and this blog here.

    i noticed in the tutorial that your code has something about flash and so on. How can i get my glog to be like yours when i load up my blog page? Please help!

    stace leza
    blog: the sand box

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hi Stace,

    Check this tutorial:
    http://blip.tv/file/4706284

    Let me know if it helped.

    ReplyDelete
  5. hey miguel it worked thanks for the helpful link. it looks much better now

    ReplyDelete