Week 6.2 Audio

Audio

“The exchange of ideas -- not technology -- is the point, and production -- not memorization -- is the proof of knowledge. ‘We're in the classroom to teach them not how to podcast, but how to communicate, and communicate compellingly’ “ (cited in Payne Smart, 2008).

Summary  of Reading – NMC ( 2005)

Technology has changed the way we communicate. Students need the ability to interpret and create multimodal texts. Multimodal texts accessed online have new rules. They lend themselves to interactive communication and are able to powerfully influence our emotions, transforming the way we learn.

Benefits of Podcasting

Creating audio provides opportunities for students to develop writing and presentation skills. The process of planning, writing and presenting a podcast requires students to understand their content thoroughly and construct then communicate their own unique perspective to an authentic audience (Payne Smart, 2008).

Willowcast is a good exemplar of a student created podcast that would be useful to guide explorations in this area. One of the teachers involved walks readers through preproduction, recording, postproduction, and publishing of a student created podcast. 

Willowcast would be useful to introduce students to the concept of podcasting and deconstructing an episode with students would be a valuable starting point for discussions around how students would like to engage with podcasting themselves.

Listening to and critiquing a variety of student created podcasts would support students to improve their own work.

Scholastic has a comprehensive list of student podcasts. Some quality options I sourced :

• ·       iTunes – Willowcast and Coulee Kids
• ·       Mrs Abernathy’s Ponderous Pandas
• ·       ColeyCast

The ReadWriteThink website has a list of lesson plans and ideas for using podcast to support learning in a variety of areas.

Exploration of Tools for Podcasting

Audio boo – able to search for and listen to interesting sound files in education. This content can be embedded into a blog or wiki.

Audio boo’s free account only allows users to record 3 minutes of audio at a time, but supports an unlimited number of recordings. Users are able to follow, comment, collect playlists ( build a board) and share directly to Facebook. I am beginning to become more familiar with the functions of Web2.0 / social media sites and these options for social interaction are standard.

I have embedded my test recording. I found I needed to set my microphone to “reduce echo” to create a clear recording from my desktop.

Podomatic – allows users with a free account 500 Mb of storage and 15G of bandwidth per month.

Podomatic also allow users to search for podcasts. Under podcasts- education- K12 education , there is a wide range of podcasts ,some created by students and others created by education leaders for a teacher audience. Each episode includes a link that allows podcasts to be embedded.

I have searched this site for podcasts for audio that could be used as a stimulus for discussion or for instruction within a lesson.

******I have created a podomatic account and would like to explore this option for podcasting in more depth. ******

Mobile Podcasting- Garageband/SoundCloud

I explored the use of audio in a simple character analysis. I chose the text “ The Paper Bag Princess”. I created a script based on five or six adjectives that best described the character and justified my choice by referring to their actions in the book.

This is an activity students might be asked to complete in class as part of the English curriculum.

I then recorded my script using GarageBand. After recording my voice I explored the “smart instruments” , loops and samples  to create a background sound track that matched my character. Recording samples ( dragon roars in my case)  and manipulating the pitch and duration allowed me to create sounds beyond the wide range offered by the instruments in the program.
Technical note to self:  for recording audio in Garage band use the spanner icon to turn off the metronome and settings to set the length of recording to automatic.

Creating a soundtrack to match each character requires deeper thought about the character and how best to express this using music/sound effects. This task also requires an appreciation of the way different modes of expression work together to create an effective message.

I also created an image in Paint.Net to match each character. With the right choice of text creating an image to represent a character may also assist students in refining and expressing the qualities of a character.

After saving I uploaded each characters "song" to SoundCloud.

This audio sharing site allows users to upload 2 hours of audio on a free account. SoundCloud also allows interaction through comments - which can be linked to specific points in the audio. This feature is useful for collaborating or providing constructive feedback.Unfortunately this site is not suitable for students as there is no way of limiting access to inappropriate comments or audio files.

  

 

REFERENCES

The New Media Consortium (NMC),(2005).A global imperative: The report of the 21^st century literacy summit. Retrieved January 12, 2014 from http://www.nmc.org/publications/2005-a-global-imperative

Payne Smart, M. (2008). Listening to themselves: podcasting takes lessons beyond the classroom [Web log message]. Retrieved January 13, 2014 from http://www.edutopia.org/podcasting-student-broadcasts