Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Why Mp3?

Why use Mp3. It is simple and portable thats why. Who cares if it is not that fancy! You need to teach and get your message out there so go ahead and Mp3.

Click Here To Listen To an Mp3 on Mp3.

Thursday, July 21, 2011

Monday, July 11, 2011

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

"Podcasting & The Trades" Fun Movie Trailer

Podcasting at NMIT 2011 from NMIT on Vimeo.

Podcasting at NMIT is going ahead in 2011. With help from the Australian Flexible Learning Framework. Here is a fun presentation of what is to come.

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Re Podcasting Project

The podcasting project that I have been involved with over the last 6 months has gone to plan. The Australian Flexible Learning Framework have been great in facilitating this project as well as sponsoring us. This part of the project has ended with two courses on moodle, both outlining podcasting for teachers. One course is based in a program called Audacity (windows based) and the other is instructing teachers how to use Garageband (Mac based). Here is a link to another screen cap from the Audacity course.


Getting Started With Audacity from NMIT on Vimeo.

This is a short screen capture on how to get started with the audio editing program Audacity.


This is a short screen capture on how to get started with the audio editing program Audacity.

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Adding Loops In Audacity

If you have been wondering how to jazz up your podcasts, watch this short video to see how you can add sound loops and short bits of music. If you would like to know more about podcasting, you can enrol in the podcasting course at NMIT.

Adding Sound Loops To An Audio Recording from NMIT on Vimeo.

Adding Sound Loops to an audio recording can be help to jazz up the sound and keep the listener interested. Listen to this and see how you can sound like a pro.


Adding Sound Loops to an audio recording can be help to jazz up the sound and keep the listener interested. Listen to this and see how you can sound like a pro.

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Podcasting Instructions

Hey, Check out the instructions from the University of Southern Florida podcasting course.

Go to the link

http://etc.usf.edu/te_win/movies/audacity.html

Why Mp3?????

Getting There

Ok, When podcasting, teachers say all you have to do is record into a microphone and post your stuff and you have a course. There is however more to podcasting than this. Check this link

www.flexiblelearning.net.au

Students seem to be adapting to podcasting and online formatting very well.

Some examples;

One carpentry student said he doesn't use computers or email so I arranged to meet him and step through the online competencies that he is doing. When we sat down I found that he knew the difference between Google Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer. He was also an active facebook user and was also competent with a mouse and use of an internet browser. If this is a student who doesn't know much about the internet then watch out for the ones who do, they are not coming to our institutes soon, they are already here and they are waiting for us (the teachers) to catch up with their knowledge.

I have several mature age apprentices who are very keen to learn online due to their lack of available time. Most of the mature age guys have families to care for and are desperate to find ways into flexible learning. Of all the age groups I have contacted during this project I think these guys are the most willing and definitely the most capable.

Some other things I have discovered is that MP3 audio seems to be the most transportable media format. MP3 will play on almost any media player old or new. I have had feedback (heartfelt thanks to people who have taken the time to comment) from some who wish to see visuals, either photo or video incorporated into podcasts because the monotone audio goes on for too long. I agree some of the podcasts I have made are hard to concentrate on, but most are no longer than 5 or so minutes. In response to the question of making podcasts more interesting and to incorporate multi-media I would like to explain;

Using video takes time, for every minute of reasonable video you see on screen there is usually 1 hour of filming and 1 hour of editing behind it. That means a 5 minute video would normally take between 10 and 12 hours to produce. So for twelve hours of work you end up with a reasonable educational and location specific production (not usually one that can be shared with other schools).

I have been producing videos for 20 years or more and I am in contact with the most up to date non-professional video editing software available, I am talking about 12 hours of work after you have organised yourself and had a fair bit of experience with editing software.

You would proboably get better value if you spend that 12 hours in front of a class unless you have a large number of students who are geographically spread.

A video production of 5 minutes used for TAFE teaching will normally date after two or three years so need re-editing/ shooting and updating after a relatively short time.

Video productions are also large files (5 mins at reasonable quality could be 150mb). Unless you are very good with compression rates this is a major hurdle (to uploading, downloading and processing) and one most teachers can't deal with.

When you upload a video it then goes up as an MP4 Quicktime, Flash AVi or any one of the other video formats. You can post it on an external site like Vimeo or Youtube, but you are still relying on the fact that the student has the capability to play it on their computer. It appears that currently a lot of students do have the capability to manage variuous formats on their devices, but you are still creating another hurdle to get over before learning can begin.

My resolution at this point is that MP3 is a far better format to ensure that as many students as possible will receive your message and have access to the valuable lessons in the context which you want them to be in.

When using MP3 audio files the issues of recording, storing, editing, uploading and downloading the files are all reduced because this is the "Holden Hubcap" of file formats. "Holden Hubcap" meaning that it is commonly available, cheap easy to use and most people know about it.

If you record sometning in Mp3 with an Easi-Speak microphone

You can then edit it with an audio program such as Audacity and then publish it as an audio podcast. You may be able to record and post without editing but this will normally leave the file size unmanaged and quite large. For example if you record a voice memo with an iPhone, 5 to ten minutes can be as large as 40mb. After you run the same file through Audacity and publish as a spoken podcast it can be reduced to as low as 2 or 3mb.

I hope some of this helps you with your quest to podcast, if you are still reading you must be keen, so please leave a comment below.

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Re Feedburner

I have been introduced to a site called feedburner. This is a site that is managed by Google and lets you have more control over your own RSS feeds. For example, I listed my podomatic page as Cam Gleeson's page. I then wanted to change it to NMIT, I can't do this via podomatic, because the RSS feed that goes out to subscribers is set. So I divert my feed through feedburner and I can change the name to whatever I want to, whenever I want. This means a lot when you realise that you are missing critical words in your titles that people can pick up when searching. My original title says nothing about podcasting which is not good.

Additionally if I am using feedburner I can create seperate RSS feeds for each podcast or video, whilst on podomatic there is just one feed for the whole page. You can access feedburner by activating a google account that gives you access. It is handy if you want to have more control over your RSS feeds as your stuff gains more of a following.

Podcasting Movie Trailer

Podcasting at NMIT 2011 from NMIT on Vimeo.

Sunday, January 30, 2011

What's happened with going viral- Get onto iTunes

This is the RSS feed to my podcasts on Podomatic.

http://camerongleeson.podomatic.com

This blog has links back to the podomatic site. All of my podcasts are also available for search on the iTunes store, if you search under Cam Gleeson. I am in the process of collating a presentation in Quicktime Player that is entitltled "Getting started with Podcasting". This presentation will be viewable on the blog as well as being placed on NMIT staff portal.

If you go to podomatic "tips and tricks" under "manage podcasts" it shows you how to list your podcasts on iTunes. This will help spread your work to a different audience and people may theninclude in their news items on websites. This inclusion in the news items then feeds into their RSS and onto other links.