Webcast Academy

NATSpectrum

A nice small freeware tool to display live microphone input levels (meaning audio gain and frequency - the starting point for audio quality control in a gain structure), plus a mic volume and mute switch, and a headset volume level switch

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=43372

For those thirsting on more detail and background information about Webcasting and Streaming, may I recommend the following titles:

Hands-On Guide To Webcasting, Internet Event and AV Production, Steve Mack & Dan Rayburn, Focal Press, ISBN-13: 978-0-240-80754-6, ISBN-10: 0-240-80754-5

This book is a requirement for the follow-up publication in second edition:

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Here is the audio for today's class of 2.4.5
Ustream Recording

 
Chat Log Below

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I am always looking for ways to help build communities and find ways to communicate. Especially when it comes to connecting parents and schools. So when I happened upon Webcast academy and Edtechtalk I knew that there were some good things going on in this community. I am technically literate and a have a good knowledge of how to use the Internet and related technologies. Thankfully the door was opened and I dove right into a world of screencasts, broadcasts and exciting visionary people to help me out. Despite my skills, some days I felt totally overwhelmed and challenged. I was told it would be like that.

As I set up the Parent Involvement webcast, Parents as Partners, it became very clear that the audience that the web cast would be targeting would need some hand holding.

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Well, I did it!  My first interncast!  I was so nervous beforehand. I was beginning to wonder what I had gotten myself into.  However, all went well, and I now am beginning to believe that I can do this.  I am absolutely amazed by technology, and the incredible opportunities that it affords us.  I think I was so nervous, because there was the realization that anyone from around the world could listen in.  While I realized that there would be in all reality very few (if anyone) listening in, it hit me that with webcasting, the world is really in my backyard.  That is so overwhelming, yet so awesome!  How fortunate for those of us who educate and learn today!  There is literally a world of knowledge at our fingertips! 

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This is an interview that I did yesterday at work. I used the same equipment (Audacity, and desktop usb mic) that many interns employ. I  post it here because, it is:

1. to be played during an ´athon (albeit FM radio)

2. about two very important topics: literacy and homelessness

3. the first time I´ve ever interviewed anyone ¨in person¨ for non-print publication

This interncast is an interview with Laura Vedeen, an exercise physiology graduate student at Illinois State University.  Laura is an Ironman triathlete and avid outdoor runner.  While I am a runner also, I find it hard to run outside in these cold central Illinois winters.  Thus, I find myself "stuck" on a treadmill indoors.  Laura provides helpful information on cold weather running gear that will be sure to keep you warm so you can keep running outside, even when it's really cold!

Today I had a conversation with a student of mine, Alex, about his experience testing out the school owned Asus eeePC a few weeks ago.  During his trial of the PC Alex took the computer between school and home and really put it to the test.  He used it during the school day for note taking and he also used it with a small group project where the students used a wiki and a Voki.

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Thanks to Matt Montagne, I was able to join in on the live interview with the Pearl Harbor survivor on the USS Oklahoma. This was a "jump right in" opportunity for me and Matt made it very easy for us. Our 8th graders are learning about WWII and the USO, so it was opened up to the students. I also had some interested 7th graders participating. Several adults and both administrators were there. 

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This is the recording for the first webcast of Parents as Partners. Matt Montagne and I joined together to interview two parents Cindy Zautcke and Rhoda Cipparone. The topic of the web cast was the impact of online social networking on our children.

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Hi Everyone-

I wanted to follow up our conversation from last Sunday's intern class where we were kicking around the idea of an Earth Day 2008 Webcastathon.  Doug Symmington is joining in the fun and we have a teacher from the UK who is going to participate as well.   Ideally it would be great if we could have the entire 24 hours of the GMT day scheduled with moderators from all over the globe!

To sign up, either drop your name in the planning wiki, leave a comment here, or leave a comment at my professional blog where I left a post about this concept.

Cheers!

Matt

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Sonja and I had to do some work on our newsletter so I decided to record it. I had some problems editing with Audacity. I wouldn't let me delete selections. I restarted a couple of times, rebooted and it worked. I removed some of our "thinking time" and cut off several minutes in the end.

The Blogging4Educators team had the big pleasure to talk to  James Farmer , currently CEO of the largest education blogging network on the web, Edublogs (http://edublogs.org), and consults for education, media and community organizations.

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I used Ustream for this assignment.  I broadcasted and recorded a video stream.  As a result you will need to use the link I have provided you at the bottom of this text to view my week 3 assignment.

I used my webcam for one of my video streams.

 I used WebcamMax  for another one of my video streams.

I used my new usb microphone for one of my audio inputs.

I used the audio from my flash animation as played through the soundcard of my machine for the other audio input.

 This was made much harder than it could have been because the machines I have access to in order to do this do not have the horsepower to deal with running WebcamMax and the Audio Repeater software.  Because of this I had to switch the audio manually.

Even doing it manually, it appeared that I was not successful because I was hearing clipping from my end while I was streaming.  You can even here me say in the recording that I did not think this was working.

However it did work as you can see from the recording that can be found here:

 http://ustream.tv/recorded/Dkhz5ZFzk4AWb,wbHSRV,IbOmTem0Ia5

There is some funny stuff at the end of this video stream recording, so it will be worth it to view the entire thing.

When I get a better machine with more horsepower, I will try posting something similar but using the Audio Repeater so that I won't have to manually switch the audio.  'the biggest problem with doing this manually is that you cannot use the microphone and the audio from the screen at the same time, and this may there will be times you will need to hear both at the same time.  But this will have to wait for when I get a better machine.

Here is the link one more time, I hope you enjoy it:

http://ustream.tv/recorded/Dkhz5ZFzk4AWb,wbHSRV,IbOmTem0Ia5

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On Friday, February 8th, 2008 Sheila, Sonja, Karen and I had the honor of speaking to Paul Goodyear, World War II veteran and survivor on the USS Oklahoma/Pearl Harbor attack on December 7th, 1941.  This was a wonderful conversation with an amazing man.  All-in-all, I think this went very well for our first shot at this.

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Click here to get your own player.

­ 

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So this challenged my patience for sure.  Seems like you should be able to use Garageband and save as MP3.  I am going to explore that more.  I ended up playing the recording I had done during the conversation and capturing it using WireTap Studio (http://www.ambrosiasw.com/utilities/wiretap/).  Seems like a cool little program, but the fact that you have to use multiple programs to accomplish the task annoys me.  Guess I will record live using WIreTap next time.  Lesson Learned!!

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Well, this has been frustrating, so I hope it works this time.