Life In The Fast Lane

Went to a pretty good workshop presented by the ACES – the Regional Educational Service Center (RESC) that services the greater New Haven area -

ACES – Make the Connection: iPods and Podcasting in World Languages and ESOL

A bunch of us went to see what folks were doing with World language and podcasting. It was really pretty good. It was Apple dominated and co-sponsored), so you got the whole iLife, iWeb, Garageband, .mac, perspective, but a least a few folks acknowledged that there were other solutions and ways to do this. Lets see if I can summarize my notes:

Jeff McQuillan opened with a great discussion of best pedagogy around language acquisition. He was able to identify multiple uses of podcasting and how they tied back into podcasting. One of the neat ideas was to use recorded podcasts as ways to review vocabulary with several speakers around a topic. Use your Ipod and an attached microphone to record several people speaking about a single topic of question. He also talked about using the Lyrics option in ItUnes to add some written material to an iTunes offering. His presentation was recorded into a podcast that will be available soon.

He is involved w/ ESLPod – link below:
Eslpod also,
Coffee Break Spanish

Next up was Kevin Gaugler, from Marist College who talked about several projects he has used with his college level classes. He spoke about Profcast where you can have a Powerpoint and as you show it and lead your class, you are recording your lecture and coordinating the slide click to your talk. Mac only but the web page says Windows beta is coming soon. Gaugler had several great examples about how he gave students abroad for a semester tasks to go out and interact w/ people in the culture, record that interaction, edit it into a podcast, and have it shared back home. Here are some links to several things he talked about:

TalkShoe – allows you to create a radio talk show

Noisely

Clickcaster

Gcast

Chinswing

Podzinger

Podomatic

Geotagging – From Flickr:

http://blog.flickr.com/flickrblog/2006/08/great_shot_wher.html

(I just tried this with my Flicker account – so cool! Adding geographic info to your photos!) However my notes say that this should also associate (tag) audios and videos with a specific geographic site. Checkout the photos below they are from San Diego.

Foola – replacement for iTunes. Good for when several people share one iPod.

Clint Kennedy the IT Director from Stonington, CT talked next about several projects he has going at Stonington.

Check out his Web2.0 sandbox:

http://www.stonington.org/Web2_0.html

or his Blog: A Blog By Clint

He spoke of several tools:
Libsyn – podcast hosting site $$
Evoca.com – use your phone to record to the web
K7.net – send your voice mail to your email, send yourself email by your phone!
Skype – Of course
Gizmo – Like Skype but you can record the conversation (records conferences as well)