http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Portablepdca/~3/441667083/

October 27, 2008 marked the official launch of our Portable PD site.  Using the money from our TLLP grant we brought together 16 teachers and gave a workshop on podcasting in the classroom.  We’ll get the 16 teachers back together for three more workshops over the school year.

Preparation of the Portable PD Podcasting Kit.



Fine representation from Adrienne Clarkson Elementary.

Hard at work as always, those teachers from Munster.

and the fine teachers from Woodroffe

Authored by Nathan Toft. Hosted by Edublogs.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Portablepdca/~3/445641923/

Shaw Jackson is a participant in our TLLP podcast workshops.

Hi Nathan,

I did a podcast with our school’s EarthCare Green Team advertising our upcoming Festive Light Exchange. We are playing this brief announcement over the PA system each morning this week. Parents can also hear this podcast at our school’s website (wej1.blogspot.com) - click the Parents link.

It did not take too much time at all to create this (writing the script, recording the voices, editing). We used the portable audio recorder to record the students’ voices. The music was downloaded from Soundsnap.com.

Shaw Jackson

WEJ

P.S. Just wanted to let you know that another teacher here at WEJ, Pat Ollevier also worked on our Festive Light podcast (we run the Green Team together). She was eager to learn about audacity!

Download

Authored by Nathan Toft. Hosted by Edublogs.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PortableRadio/~3/446639852/

With November 11th just a few days away, 56js and 5nt began a discussion on their blogs about what Remembrance Day means to us. The students have some very thoughtful answers. This Portable Radio Point of View is just a sampling of their opinions. To read more please visit our class blogs 5/6js.ca and 5nt.ca.

The students who you will hear in this podcast are:

Bradley, Jeffrey, Megan, Gabriel, Sarah, Katie, Adrianna, Maggie and Callum

Download

Authored by Jane Smith. Hosted by Edublogs.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PortableRadio/~3/446579242/

With November 11th just a few days away, 56js and 5nt began a discussion on their blogs about what Remembrance Day means to us. The students have some very thoughtful answers. This Portable Radio Point of View is just a sampling of their opinions. To read more please visit our class blogs  5/6Js.ca and   5nt.ca.

The students who you will hear in this podcast are:

Bradley, Jeffrey, Megan, Gabriel, Sarah, Katie, Adrianna, Maggie and Callum

Download

Authored by Jane Smith. Hosted by Edublogs.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Portablepdca/~3/446918343/

This is one of those “Its been a long week and I don’t need this” stories.

I had been pushing time a bit this week to get an edition of Portable Radio Point of View out in time for Remembrance Day. The students had done some really good reflecting on the topic and so I needed to get this podcast done and done now before it became “old news”.

I decided to work on my Asus Eee PC 4G computer to do the edit. Things seemed to be going well but all of a sudden I would get a friendly message telling me that audacity was sorry but it would have to close. AAAARGH!!! Of course I hadn’t been regularly saving the work I was doing.

Start again…this time saved work, often. Again part way through the edit…audacity was very sorry but it had to close.

I am a slow learner so it took a few of these before I clued in that I needed to alter the way that I was working. It seems that this was a memory issue. Once I started saving my work to the 8mb chip instead of the little Asus life improved and the work got done.

Anyway, if this sounds familiar to you you could be experiencing a memory issue. I know that I am. Did I also mention that I lost my car keys two weeks ago. Put them down somewhere and….

P.S. I think it is a really good episode of Portable Radio. Take a listen at portableradio.ca

Authored by Jane Smith. Hosted by Edublogs.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Portablepdca/~3/451915233/

Hi Jane and Nathan,

More success from WEJ! We are loving the equipment and PD we have received as it is paying dividends!

Recently, my grade 3 class had a parent volunteer into present about her grandfather - a veteran of WW1 - Vimy Ridge.

To keep the students involved and active in the presentation (which was easy she is a great presenter) I borrowed a 5W’s and H graphic organizer to help the students write down information they heard during the presentation.

After the presentation was done, in small groups of 4 or 5 I had them share their organizers with each other to add to what they had written down. We then took up up together on the Smartboard. Next, I assigned one aspect (Who, what , where..) to each small group for them to convert the jots into a paragraph or two. Then, they decided who would say what and we recorded the tracks. I did most of the editing this time in Audacity and layed the music bed, but I modelled it for them on the Smartboard with hopes that after a few tries they will be able to do the majority of the editing. Roughly 200 minutes from start to finish, with a little extra time for me to polish.

Overall, this was a fun, fast and fruitful activity. The kids (and parents) really do love to hear the finished product, Check it out! As Jane mentioned it is on our school website’s parent page at

http://wej4.blogspot.com/

The other brief clip “The Call” was recorded using the DVR [digital voice recorder] we got in the package as well. Although the quality wasn’t very good because of all the excitement, etc. going on in the background the content is truely Canadian! This was an enrichment project for a student to gather some audio (interviews and play by play) from our ministick league final game. “The Call” is the winning goal from the overtime shootout!:-)

Thanks again Nathan and Jane! Podcasting rocks!

Jamie Barteux

W. Erskine Johnston Public School

Authored by Nathan Toft. Hosted by Edublogs.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Portablepdca/~3/451915231/

Those of you at our workshop yesterday saw this in our presentation:

I promised to share how that was done.  It’s just a matter of filling in the blanks at the following site (the site it pretty graphic intensive):

Get Your Drug On

To save the picture to your computer, you often right-click and “Save image as”.  Because this site is Flash-based that won’t work.  Instead, use the “Print Screen” key (sometimes says “Prt Sc” - it’s usually at the top of the keyboard) on your keyboard and edit it the screenshot with imaging editing software like PhotoShop or Fireworks.

Here’s another site that generates your own personalized beer label.  Just fill in the blanks and voila.  Copyright infringement?  What copyright infringement?

Make your own beer label

For more fun and games along these lines visit:

The Generator Blog

Authored by Nathan Toft. Hosted by Edublogs.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Portablepdca/~3/452338144/

Here’s a message from OCDSB teacher, Lorraine Montgomery:

Hi all,

Please do visit our classroom podcast site:

We recorded our presentation from Tuesday and also now have our first Point of View podcast uploaded for listening.  My students would love to have comments posted for them to read on Monday when we go to lab.

Cheers!

Lorraine Montgomery

Dunlop PS 5/6

Authored by Nathan Toft. Hosted by Edublogs.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Portablepdca/~3/463491232/

Hi Nathan and Jane,

I have recently been delving into the blog scene for my classroom. I figured I would share as it has our podcasts posted there, as well as some other resources for parents and educators. It is a work in progress, but I am happy with the ease of creation and editing that Blogger has to offer! The site isn’t linked to our school page as of yet as I am still in my “Beta” version of the site and learning all it has to offer. Unfortunately, a lot of the content is blocked by the board filter even though it is educational and safe for viewing. Check it out!

http://wej33.blogspot.com

Thanks again for the inspiration with regards to the podcasts!

Jamie

——————————————————

Jamie Barteaux

Grade 3 - CCT - W.E. Johnston P.S.

Authored by Nathan Toft. Hosted by Edublogs.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PortableRadio/~3/466807121/

Here’s another jam-packed episode!  In this episode you will hear…

students from 5nt teaching you how to:

• build a snowman


• catch a fish


• get grounded


• speak Korean


• make an all-dressed gourmet pizza

Would You Rather?

Results of the junior boys soccer tournament

Information about the Home Children

Video game tips

Comedy Corner

And the world premiere of the song, “How to Make a Peanut Butter Sandwich”, composed and performed by the students from 5NT and 5/6JS.

Music used in this episode:

• WW - Greenroom (Podsafe Music Network)


• Metal Futures - Acid XPress

Click to download

Authored by Nathan Toft. Hosted by Edublogs.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Portablepdca/~3/470355342/

This animation was very easy to make.  Honest.  Try it out yourself at goanimate.com.

I don’t plan on setting my grade 5 students loose on the site for the time being. There are too many bikini-clad characters, bars (of the drinking establishment kind), weapons and the like.  Most entertaining, which, of course, is a tad risky for our ultra-conservative sensibilities.

There is mention on the site, of creating a teacher-friendly version.  I’m hopeful that will happen.

Still, it’s a fun way to hook people, young or old, and the results are pretty professional. I can see it being used at the start of a presentation or lesson.

Another con: Edublogs and Wordpress don’t allow the movies to be embedded properly.  The Firefox browser almost seems to work - but doesn’t.  Internet Explorer just creates an empy box. This issue is discussed in goanimate.com’s forums:

Blogs based on Wordpress do not allow embedding videos. The code that

you pasted got trimmed when you saved your post. Only embedding from

certain sites (like YouTube) can work as a result on EduBlogs. We are

working on our side to contact Wordpress and see if there is a way to

enable that in the future, but for now nothing much we can do. We will

keep you posted if we find any way around this.

So, I faked it.  I took a screenshot of the opening frame, cropped it with Fireworks (similar to PhotoShop) and uploaded it to Edublogs as a picture.  I then made the picture link to the goanimate.com site.

Authored by Nathan Toft. Hosted by Edublogs.