TLT 450: Technology in school settings

Pulling people’s podcasts, I came across some really cool stuff on your individual blogs that I thought I should share out to the group. Also, there is some great stuff in the discussion threads below that I want to make sure people don’t miss. Following that, I’ll offer a few comments on podcasts in general and single out some great work for others’ auditory pleasure.

Best of blog: On this blog, I really enjoyed the discussion in the Web 2.0 thread. Terri got it started by making a great connect with previous lit topics (digital divide, digital disconnect), and Alex came in several times, making similar connections and also offering a great, concrete example of tech adoption issues with graphing calculators. Ali and Matt also had thought-provoking comments, which stuck in my head as I wrote the final version of the quiz….

On other blogs, do check out Terri’s awesome pic of a Monarch butterfly; listening to podcasts, I really enjoyed Carol’s “Ten things first-year college students should know,” Peicheng’s intro to tones in the Chinese language, and of course the Phillies-oriented podcasts were bittersweet, by the time I listened to them. Ah well, there’s always next year, right? Plus the Yankees lost–there’s some small satisfaction in that, right?

Podcast thoughts: We definitely had a group of outliers in terms of production quality. In addition to those cited above, give a listen to the podcasts by Michael, Tim, and Terri–clear, crisp audio, and when music is used it’s managed well: starts loud, tapers down to leave room for the speaking part, etc. So while the point of this podcast wasn’t technical excellent (but just getting it done), do keep these aspects in mind as you prepare future podcasts. Speaking of music: those of you who imported music files into your projects discovered that the metadata often came with it, causing some surprises in album art (“The Karate Kid” soundtrack! Whoo-hoo!), artist, etc. So: In the future, find a workaround, use Creative-Commons-licensed music, or create your own. (I think Garageband helps with this, but other programs will do it, too–mess around with PhotoStory, for example.) There was some nice work fitting music/sound-effects to the topic (e.g., “Eye of the Tiger” goes with anything, natch), but do be sure to manage the volume level: if the music or sound effect is way, way louder than your speaking part, that’s not good. It’s a common problem, since musical artists (Survivor! Whoo-hoo!) record in a professional studio and you and I record at home using $10 headset+mic combos. But do your best to fiddle with the mic settings, find a quiet space to record in, and when you lay the tracks together, balance them: Dial down the music and bring up your speaking. Note that Audacity has a nice feature under “Effects” called “Equalize”–it juices tracks to a more equitable level, automagically. Finally, linking: when linking to your podcast, be sure to link to the podcast file itself and not your directory. You can test this by clicking your link: does it load an mp3 or a web directory?

Thanks, and feel free to discuss in the thread below! (I’m sure some Yankees fan is going to let me feel their wrath….)