It has been a week since EVO sessions have finished and I haven't had time to post. I haven't finished all my Classdigitools assignments and I am really planning to. Once I finish all Week 5 projects, I will post about them here.
I have, however, completed all my Podcasting tasks and I proudly give you Natasa's Podcasting Blog. The blog, exactly as it is, is the final product of the workshop, an eportfolio. This doesn't go to say that it will always remain as it is now. I am planning to add more pages once I start working on my future podcasting projects, but at this stage, everything you see there has been created during the workshop.
It is not difficult to create an "Animotocast". You just create an Animoto clip the usual way and, instead of choosing their audio, you upload your own. The trick is to have enough photos ready to last you until the end of your audio. Otherwise, your podcast will be cut short. It goes both ways, so be prepared to sacrifice some of your photos if the audio is short.
You can create the audio for your Animoto using any of the podcasting tools, but I am hooked on Audacity. If you think Audacity is scary or too difficult to use, I advise you to attend the next Podcasting EVO session. You won't regret it. I feel that
By the time I post this we will be well into Week 5. However, I am very, very busy with my Webskills course. Not to mention Podcasting.
I didn't devote as much time to EVO as I usually do, but I am glad that I didn't give up completely. I learnt a lot and, even though I am late with some tasks, I am going to continue working on them after the session is over. One thing I am really sorry about is that I had to sacrifice the interaction, which is always the best part of any online course. But I did most of the tasks.
This week in Classdigitools we did tools for speaking. My main problem is my webcam, which is very old and very cheap. I need a new one and it is on my priority list. I couldn't do some of the tasks because of my camera and I had to modify others.
One of our tasks was to talk about why we became teachers, using Recordr. It is a handy tool and luckily lets you choose whether you will record video or audio only. Here is my audio:
Another task was to go to Intervue.me and talk about how we spend Christmas with our family. I bravely recorded my video with my terrible little camera, but it wouldn't work. So, I modified the task. Before I show you what I did, let me tell you that I am going to use Intervue.me a lot when I buy a new camera. It is easy to use. The teacher puts a question at the top of the page, and the students answer talking into their webcams. You can listen to what other participants said here.
We were very busy this week. Task 3 was to draw our family using Educreations. It is a very user-friendly tool and I can recommend it warmly. Here is what I did:
Task 5 was to create a lesson plan using one of the tools offered. This is where I am going to "borrow" my Podcasting lesson plan. Though the template is different from the one provided in the Classdigitools wiki, I hope it will do the trick:
Podcast Project Plan Title: MY FAVOURITE PLACE Main objective: Participants describe their favourite place. Level: Intermediate Class type: adults Aim: Describing a place Activity focus: Speaking Time: Max 3 minutes Material: Computer with access to Internet / Headphones (which students use from home) Procedure: 1. Teacher and students practice describing their favourite place in class. Teacher introduces relevant vocabulary. 2. Teacher posts an example to the class wiki. Teacher also posts a screencast explaining how to use Audioboo. 3. Student signs up for an account in Audioboo. 4. Student records the Boo. 5. Teacher posts a screencast explaining how to post a link to the Boo in the class wiki. 6. Student posts a link to their Boo in the class wiki. 7. Teacher posts a Screencast explaining how to write/record a reply to a Boo. 8. Teacher posts the first reply to the student’s Boo. 9. Student chooses a classmate and listens to his/her recording and writes/records comments or questions in their classmate´s Boo. 10. In class, teacher and students discuss the experience and what they learnt from it. 11. Students brainstorm ideas for the next Boo. 12. Students choose the best idea for a new podcast.
As you can see from the plan, the students will do the task from home, which is why I have chosen Audioboo, since it is very user-friendly.
And here is the Boo I made for my Podcasting class. It is called My Mystery Person:
Apart from being very easy to use, Audioboo allows voice comments as well as text comments and this can be great for class discussions or interviews.
I am going to stop here for now. This post is very long as it is and it probably took ages to load, considering everything that I have embedded into it. However, there were some tools in our Classdigitools wiki that I would like to explore further and I am going to do that in one of my next posts.
