Webcast Academy
Intro
I was not able to download the beta version of Audacity. Will try again later. So here is my intro in the old version.
Compression - What's the Big Squeeze?
Here is a little audio I created to help explain the use of a compressor in audio editing.
~lee
Women of Web 2.0 Debuts during Webcastathon, October 15, 2006, with a little help from my friends.
Hello all, I had no idea when I began my webcast academy that I would be finishing up with a weekly show, starting November 7, 2006, 9 PM, on the worldbridges network. Thanks to Jeff and Dave for this opportunity. Thanks to the wonderful audience we seem to have dragged with us and a special thanks to the women, Sharon Peters, Jennifer Wagner and Vicki Davis, who with Cheryl Oakes make up Women of Web 2.0.
This will be a journey, join in the conversation as we travel the planet.
Thanks to Derek Miller for his podsafe music which is used in the intro and outro.
I'll be back with the show, right now it is too big topost.
Class of 1.3 Open House
Webcast Academy Open House
Information about the Upcoming Class of 1.3
October 15, 2006
Geek!Ed!
Hey Folks... Just listened to the Geek!Ed! podcast and they mentioned that they have a gear page that explains their equipment. Here's the link:
http://coverpage.pcs.k12.mi.us/geeked/?page_id=102
I think I'm going to get one of their recommended SnowBall microphones as I really need a unidirectional unit. I'll let you know how it goes.
Hope everyone is having a good webcastathon weekend!
Cheers.
SpaceCast 5 -- Back for Another Round
SpaceCast Episode #5 is edited and ready to go. This is our first live event for our middle school elgg students (personallearningspace.com) this school year. After being recorded live on air, I had to edit some choice items but it is still entertaining.
Last year, I had to ask others to broadcast for me since I could not get the firewalls open at school. That problem is now solved and I am able to handle the details. I still must work on getting the chat room to work for me and kids. Paul Allison and I joined Madeline Brownstone for a nice student cast session.
Just as we learn the ins and outs of social networking, so do our students and therein lies the reason for my editing a little of the audio. We will be discussing plans for this friday's SpaceCast tonight on Teachers Teaching Teachers so we can be better guides for out students. See you next week (Friday at 10:30am EST). (Click here to subscribe to SpaceCast)
Self motivated learning
In a recent post, Leigh Blackall talks about the decentralization of education. He shows a vision where learning is freely available to all through the best teachers on the Internet.
This can be made possible if teachers loosen their coupling with institutions and create an independant prescence on the web. Each teacher shares her research interests, and findings with everyone over her blog, podcasts and the like. Teachers also build communities of learning on their website. Learning is promoted by conversations; synchronous and asynchronous. By giving assignments and publishing micro-contents that explain various concepts in the form of text, audio, video.
Slideshare - bastard love child of powerpoint and youtube. (i love that line)
Hey folks. New tool just got set up. So far, it looks like a step in the right direction. I'd be very interested to see what you folks make of it. http://www.rashmisinha.com/archives/06_10/slideshare%20techcrunch.html
Class of 1.3 Applications
This will be the last 1.x class at the Academy (Class 2.1 will be beginning in early January). If you are interested in joining the Class of 1.3, please fill out the 'Webcast Apprentice' portion of your Webcast Academy Profile and post a comment in the Apply for Class of 1.3 Forum thread indicating your interest in joining. If you have any questions, please post them in the About the Academy Forums, so everyone at the academy can share in the info exchange.
What does it mean to become an intern?
Interns are expected to work collaboratively with other members of the Academy community, contribute to the development of training resources, and eventually produce and publish at least three live, interactive webcasts. We're a pretty 'low-pressure' environment, but we do ask that interns be willing to invest a couple hours/week during their internship. All materials produced at the Academy (and all Worldbridges sites) are released with a Creative Commons license There is no fee for participating and no official commitment after you complete your internship, but we hope that graduated interns will remain part of the community, assisting future classes and possibly webcasting somewhere on the Worldbridges network. Everyone is welcome to join, although if we receive more applicants than we can handle, priority will be given to those interested in webcasting 'Worldbridgy' kind of content - that is educational, collaborative, and/or inter-cultural.
The first Class of 1.3 sessions will be scheduled the week of Oct. 16-22.
We will have at least one meeting on Sunday Oct. 22 at 4pmGMT. If other interns are available to host and/or stream meetings at other times, that would be great. Please post an event.
Levelator does work
In a recent post I described my experiment with live online training.
Anyone who has tried recording both ends of an audio conversation would know that the voice of the person on machine the recrding is being done gets recorded significantly louder than the other participants. Leveling this difference is a manual process where we normalize and amplify certain sections in Audacity.
A new tool called Levelator automates this process. You give it a WAV file, and it gives back a leveled WAV file. It does work and pretty well too.
The best part is: it's free for non commercial use.
The software is available at http://www.gigavox.com/levelatorDownload/
Webcast Academy Meeting - 1.2.8
Academy Meeting 1.2.8 - Oct. 1, 2006
Oct. 1, 2006
Download mp3
10/1/06 09:27:07 Adam: hi all
10/1/06 10:52:45 Jeff: http://vyew.com/v0.30U/content/sm_main.php?mid=086346
10/1/06 11:05:26 Jeff: Hi Jason
10/1/06 11:05:35 Jeff: Vyew is here: http://vyew.com/v0.30U/content/sm_main.php?mid=086346
10/1/06 11:07:02 JasonR: Greetings
10/1/06 11:07:09 Trevor: The same!
10/1/06 11:08:40 JasonR: Checking audio settings
10/1/06 11:10:13 JasonR: New headset has a mute button. Forgot to check that. :)
10/1/06 11:11:02 JasonR: Figured with a mesh network, more would be better, no?
10/1/06 11:13:37 new2mac: cool
10/1/06 11:13:49 Jeff: http://www.webcastacademy.net/node/377
10/1/06 11:16:01 new2mac: i noticed a couple of interesting skypecasts by worldbriges
10/1/06 11:16:50 Trevor: I'm having a problem with the audio today, so at the moment I am simply going to follow the text chat!
10/1/06 11:18:14 new2mac: jeff,trevor i do reviews on skypecast at http://myvideopodcast.libsyn.com
10/1/06 11:19:02 new2mac: main ingredient lacking in skypecast is the ability to integrate text chat
10/1/06 11:20:59 Trevor: I finally have audio.
10/1/06 11:22:11 Trevor: Great idea!
10/1/06 11:22:30 Trevor: Sound quality on the stream is great
10/1/06 11:22:47 Jeff: cool - glad to hear it
10/1/06 11:22:57 Jeff: thanks
10/1/06 11:24:48 new2mac: great quality sound..am listening via itunes on my mac
10/1/06 11:26:02 new2mac: using nicecast?
10/1/06 11:26:17 Jeff: I'm using Oddcast (open source and free)
10/1/06 11:26:23 new2mac: lol
10/1/06 11:27:10 new2mac: whats the software jeff
10/1/06 11:27:27 adaptives: Sounds good (a few breaks...) but good otherwise
10/1/06 11:28:00 Trevor: Sounds perfect, really perfect on the stream!
10/1/06 11:28:09 Jeff: http://www.oddsock.org/tools/
10/1/06 11:29:23 Trevor: Can you contextualize this for me Jeff? What program are you using for streaming today?
10/1/06 11:29:34 new2mac: yup blew US40 on my logitech 350D
10/1/06 11:30:54 Jeff: http://www.oddsock.org/tools/oddcastv3/oddcastv3_standalone_3.1.12.exe
10/1/06 11:31:08 new2mac: yikes win only?
10/1/06 11:31:12 Jeff: http://vyew.com/v0.30U/content/sm_main.php?mid=086346
10/1/06 11:31:24 adaptives: How do we add items to the list on the webcast report page?
10/1/06 11:31:42 Trevor: A naive question that hopefully will not frustrate you -- can people join in the streaming or is that only done through Skypecast?
10/1/06 11:33:03 JasonR: afk
10/1/06 11:33:21 Trevor: afk?
10/1/06 11:34:36 new2mac: wow am seeing somebodys desktop
10/1/06 11:34:48 Trevor: I see your desktop!
10/1/06 11:35:49 JasonR: Away From Keyboard. I am back now. :)
10/1/06 11:36:20 Trevor: So you would use Oddcast instead of Nicecast?
10/1/06 11:36:58 new2mac: good question
10/1/06 11:37:44 Trevor: That's what I see -- only Vjew.
10/1/06 11:37:52 new2mac: have to test out oddcast in my other intel puter
10/1/06 11:38:58 Trevor: No we have only seen one page -- your entry vjew page
10/1/06 11:39:07 new2mac: opensource shouldnt be win only
10/1/06 11:39:13 Trevor: Oh Oh -- the audio is gone from the streaming now!
10/1/06 11:39:54 Trevor: I am going to try clicking on Channel 1 again. . .
10/1/06 11:40:21 new2mac: trevor,channel 2 is better for u i guess
10/1/06 11:40:43 JasonR: Guessing Jeff needed to reboot
10/1/06 11:40:53 new2mac: lol win
10/1/06 11:41:18 Trevor: I guess too -- the streaming audio is definitely out.
10/1/06 11:42:50 new2mac: is the streaming done live..or does it reads from a self creating archive that is almost live
10/1/06 11:42:52 Trevor: I have the audio again on streaming
10/1/06 11:43:14 new2mac: what happened
10/1/06 11:43:50 Trevor: You are back.
10/1/06 11:44:08 jl: my connection went down
10/1/06 11:44:36 adaptives: You are brave to try it again :-)
10/1/06 11:45:23 adaptives: Is everyone silent or is the sound out again?
10/1/06 11:45:45 Trevor: Yes the sound is out again.
10/1/06 11:46:27 new2mac: is this the first time using Oddcast?
10/1/06 11:46:38 adaptives: I can see the blue line and the ellipses in vyew
10/1/06 11:47:15 Trevor: The ellipses are from me!
10/1/06 11:47:18 new2mac: jl, is this the first time using Oddcast
10/1/06 11:48:07 Trevor: Sound is back on streaming.
10/1/06 11:48:07 new2mac: wow
10/1/06 11:48:17 Trevor: Must be a conflict with Vjew
10/1/06 11:48:48 new2mac: it crashes the browser
10/1/06 11:49:06 Trevor: How about trying IE?
10/1/06 11:49:14 new2mac: simulat a crash?
10/1/06 11:49:34 JasonR: Re: Stream and participation. You have to be in the Skypecast to participate in the conversation.
10/1/06 11:49:53 new2mac: lol
10/1/06 11:50:03 JasonR: There is usually a slight delay between the Skyepcast and the stream (true Jeff?)
10/1/06 11:50:11 new2mac: yes
10/1/06 11:50:45 Trevor: I see something really nice in the possibility -- i.e. that there is a collective whiteboard.
10/1/06 11:51:04 JasonR: No
10/1/06 11:51:50 new2mac: jeff say a keyword and we will see how long is the lag
10/1/06 11:52:36 new2mac: ping
10/1/06 11:53:04 JL: 21 secs
10/1/06 11:53:10 new2mac: cool
10/1/06 11:53:41 adaptives: http://www.blogarithms.com/index.php/archives/2006/09/28/the-levelator/
10/1/06 11:54:49 new2mac: check out this framset tool for skypecast http://www.lookr.net/skypecast/?user=myvideopodcast
10/1/06 11:56:40 Trevor: Ciao!
10/1/06 11:57:22 JasonR: Lost audio
10/1/06 11:57:37 JL: you're not in the skypecast
10/1/06 11:57:46 new2mac: thanks jeff for playing host am out of here
Attached audio files: Webcast Academy Meeting - 1.2.8
Successfull experiment with web based training
I have been meaning to try webcasting for training from a very long time.
I was finally able to try it for a corporate training with a client. This is an account of our experience, hoping that it will motivate those who have been thinking of similar initiatives, to actually give it a try.
The topic for the session was related to object oriented software design, where we discussed the goals that we should have in mind when we design software. There were a total of 5 participants. We used Vyew (http://www.vyew.com) for collaboration. Vyew is an excellent free tool that supports slides, desktop sharing, desktop screenshots, and text chatting. It also has a voice conferencing facility that supports upto 20 participants. However we did not use this feature because participants would have had to make long distance calls to the conference call number. Instead we conferenced using Skype. One user had problems with his mic and could only hear. It was a slight limitation, but he got over it by asking questions over the text chat. I used Audacity to record the session. I used "Wave Out Mix" to record both ends of the conversation, but the incoming audio was not recorded properly, because the speaker volume on Audacity was slightly low.
Missed Webcast but Learning a Lot
I'm sorry I missed the Webcast today for the Webcast Academy, but that notwithstanding I have been profiting greatly from all the discussions there and on EdtechTalk. I just started a Delicious account and found Writely for a Chinese professor who wants to have a collaborative Chinese writing project in the lab. The Edtech Talk newscast was a great idea. For the record, I enjoyed the talk between Doug and Dave spanning the northern part of the continent from the end of August.
Trevor
Edit a Blog Entry
I am trying to edit one of my blog entries. Did the option to edit or go to My Workspace get disabled? I was trying to change a link address but get a fatal error note when clicking on My Workspace. Thanks!
Lee