Before reading this, you should have gone through the steps indicated in these two posts:

• >> Podcasting: Step 1 – RSS and setting up a teacher blog
• >> Podcasting: Step 2 – Recording and editing your podcast

In this last part of the Podcasting guide, we’re going to convert our audio masterpiece to a format suitable for mobile audio players and the Internet, and make it available as a podcast! This will involve 3 steps:

1. Converting your audio to MP3

2. Sending your MP3 file to your blog

3. Getting your students/colleagues to subscribe to your podcast

To get started, follow the guide below!

Read/act on this first:

In the last session we set up a blog and learned what RSS was. Let’s just remind ourselves of what podcasting is, shall we?

So podcasting is when you deliver audio files to ’subscribers’ automatically using an RSS feed. This RSS feed is generated automatically by the Posterous-powered blog you set up in Step 1.

In this session we’re going to be using a program called Audacity. This is available for all platforms – Windows, Mac and Linux. It is free and Open Source software. Audacity is already installed on the computers we shall be using at school, but if you need to download it at home, you can find it here: http://audacity.sourceforge.net

Note: we will need a ‘plugin’ for Audacity to be able to export to MP3 format, but we’ll leave that for next session!

Instead of re-inventing the wheel, we’ll be making use of the excellent video guides to using Audacity that can be found here: http://www.how-to-podcast-tutorial.com/17-audacity-tutorial.htm

1. The editing tools
2. Basic editing and trimming your audio
3. Importing audio and adding music to your podcast

When you save your audio, just save it as a WAV file. We’ll work on exporting to MP3 next time. If you’re looking for music that you can legally and safely use in your podcasts, check out the links at the bottom of the Wikipedia page for ‘Podsafe’.

Over the next three weeks, staff e-learning sessions will focus on getting started with podcasting. This first session starts off with the basics you will need as a teacher before even pressing that ‘record’ button:

1. An understanding of what RSS is.
2. A blog onto which to put MP3 files.

The easiest way to get your head around what RSS is and how it means that audio files can be delivered to interested parties automatically is by watching this excellent explanatory video prepared by CommonCraft:

A podcast differs from simply placing an audio file on the Internet because of RSS. It means that new content can be ‘pushed’ to interested parties rather than them having to manually check for updates. The process of interested parties requesting that podcasts are delivered automatically is known as ’subscribing’.

Now that you know what RSS is, you need to have a mechanism by which you can generate one. In our case, this is going to be a blog. Anything that you add to a blog post will be automagically turned into a subscribable podcast.

To learn how to set up a blog, check out the elearnr guide entitled:
Creating a homework blog in 3 simple steps using email

If you want to jump ahead and have a go podcasting before the next session, you should visit the Box of Tricks website where José Picardo has put together an excellent short presentation entitled Podcasting in Five Easy Steps.

One of the tools I recommended I haven’t yet done an E-Learning Staff Session on. That’s Voki – here’s a sample of what you can do:

Get a Voki now!

I’ve run a session – and therefore created guides to – the other four web applications I recommend for SEN practitioners:

• How to create engaging video starters without any creative talent using Animoto
• Using del.icio.us to synchronise bookmarks & find new, exciting stuff
• Creating a homework blog in 3 simple steps using email
• How to use Google Earth more effectively.

My Twitter network, as ever, were extremely helpful – although unfortunately I received some of the ideas after I’d finalised the resources:

I can finally reveal the answer. I get most of them from… Twitter!

It’s probably best to show Twitter in action rather than just try to explain it. It’s a bit like a hybrid of the best bits of Facebook and Here’s the message I sent to my Twitter network on Tuesday evening as I was leaving school at around 4pm:

And here’s the response I got by the time I’d got home and had a cup of coffee!

…and then later, when educators in other places around the world weren’t asleep:

Depending on the time of day and who’s in your Twitter network depends on where in the world you get your responses from. It’s like ‘microblogging’, crossed with text messaging (you’ve only got 140 characters) and a social network all rolled into one. You can share links, ideas and resources really quickly and easily.

Here’s links, in alphabetical order, to the sites mentioned above. My top 5 are in bold, whilst those in red are those currently blocked by our school network. If you’re reading this and from somewhere else in the world, your mileage may vary… :-p

• Animoto – an easy way to create high-quality and engaging videos using images and text
• Backpack- an organizer (calendar, group discussion tools, etc.)for small businesses and organizations
• blip.tv - a video sharing service designed for creators of user-generated content
• Bloglines – an RSS feed reading application
• Blogger/Blogspot - a blogging platform by Google
• Delicious – online ’social’ bookmarking
• Diigo – online ’social’ bookmarking with advanced features and groups
• Dropbox – store, sync and share files online
• Drop.io – privately share files up to 100MB online
• Edublogs.org – a blogging platform dedicated to educational blogging
• Edublogs.tv – online video sharing and embedding tool
• Eduspaces – a social network and blogging platform for education
• Elluminate – ‘elearning and collaboration solution’ (not free)
• Evernote – ‘allows you to capture information (text, photos, etc.) and make it accessible from anywhere
• Flickr - a photo-sharing website with Creative Commons-licensed content
• GMail – an online email application from Google that provides lots of free storage
• Google Calendar – a web-based calendar application that has RSS feeds and a reminder service
• Google Docs – stores documents online and allows collaboration with others
• Google Earth – a more powerul and 3D version of Google Maps (requires installation)
• Google Maps – online mapping with advanced features
• Google Reader – an RSS feed reading application
• Google Scholar – search academic journals and articles
• iGoogle – customizable home page (.com blocked at our school, .co.uk not!)
• Kizoom – web-based ‘intelligent’ public transport alerter and organizer
• Last.fm – a social network built around music that also recommends music based on your listening habits
  
• MobileMe – online synchronization service for Apple users (not free)
• Moodle – an Open-Source content management system based on constructivist principles (requires installation on a web server)
• Ning – allows you to create your own social network very easily
• Posterous – very simple and easy-to-use blogging platform
• PBwiki – an easy-to-use wiki creation tool
• Picnik – powerful online image-editing application
• PingMe – a social and mobile interactive reminder service for getting things done
• Remember The Milk – an online to-do list with advanced features
• Second Life – a 3D ‘virtual world’ (requires software download)
• SlideShare – upload and share presentations
• Syncplicity – sync, store and share files online
• TeacherTube – YouTube for educational videos
• Toodledo – an online to-do list
• Twitter – a micro social-networking tool
• UStream – live video streaming and chat rooms
• VoiceThread – allows comments around content such as videos, pictures and Powerpoints
• Voki – make your own speaking avatar to embed in your blog, wiki or website
• Wetpaint – a good-looking wiki creation tool
• Wikispaces - a wiki creation tool
• Wordpress – a highly-configurable Open-Source blogging platform (requires installation on a web server)
• Zoho Show – create collaborative, online Powerpoint-like presentations

Remember, with collaborative applications you have to give a little to get a little for it to be really useful. Try out Twitter over the holiday period. Merry Christmas!

PS Twitter’s best used with a dedicated program rather than the web interface. I recommend the wonderful TweetDeck, available for Windows, Mac OSX and Linux.

First, though, here’s Don McMillan explaining some of the REALLY bad ways people use Powerpoint:

5 quick tips if you MUST use Powerpoint…

1. Never use a font size smaller than 24pt. If you have a large classroom, you may need to go even bigger than this. Stand at the back and check!
2. Limit the number of words you have per slide. Don’t use them as an aid to remind you what to say. They should enhance what you are talking about, not repeat it! A great way is to limit yourself to 5 words and 5 bullet points. Alternatively, just use an image to represent your idea/concept/instruction.
3. Find graphics that represent things you do frequently in lessons (perhaps from clipart) and always use these when doing a similar activity. For example, a pen writing for when it’s time to start work or two people talking for discussion/group work. These help reinforce good habits and aid classroom management.
4. Use contrasting colours. The easiest way to do this is to choose an option from the ‘Slide Design’ menu. Otherwise, remind yourself of the colour wheel.
5. Limit the number of different slide transitions in a presentation. One or two is classy, lots of different ones looks unprofessional.

Beyond Powerpoint…

There are lots of different tools that do a similar job to Powerpoint. For example, Keynote on the Mac and OpenOffice.org Impress (all platforms). But you don’t want to simply replicate Powerpoint’s functionality, you want to move beyond it.

Method 1 – Online presentations

Creating presentations on, or uploading presentations to, the Internet can be extremely useful. Not only does it give you access to better visual effects than Powerpoint can offer, but it makes them readily available to your students outside the lesson. The following three slides are taken from part of the very first lesson I had with Year 7 this academic year:

This is the same presentation when I uploaded it to Google Docs and tinkered slightly:

And here it is in the wonderful SlideRocket after using some of its functionality:

Zoho Show is another option. All of these are completely free or have a free basic option. I’d recommend Google Docs if you’d like to collaborate (or students to collaborate) on presentations and SlideRocket for fancy effects. The latter has a desktop version, although you have to upgrade your account to a paid-for version to be able to download it. Of course, if you just want to make your presentations available online, you could use SlideShare…

Method 2 – Add interactive elements

• Need to show some statistics and figures? Try richchartlive.com!
• Add a short video clip to your presentation. Find it on YouTube, or another video-sharing site. Download and convert it (in this case to MOV or WMV format) via Zamzar.com. There’s an elearnr guide on how to do this here.
• The PicLens plugin for Powerpoint 2007 means you’re not restricted to a linear presentation – and it looks cool! (see below)

Method 3 – Use a completely different approach

Ask yourself, “do I really need to use a Powerpoint-style format?”. If the answer is “perhaps not!” then check out some of these suggestions:

• Glogster – we’ve already been through glogs on elearnr. They are a great, visual way to present as you can embed videos, audio and images quickly and easily.
• Mindmap – why not demonstrate good practice and create a mindmap to present ideas? Students can learn organizational skills from this, and there are a number of collaborative mindmapping sites, including MindMeister, bubbl.us, Mindomo and Mind42.
• Wiki – a wiki is a collaborative website. It’s also a great place to embed content from other websites and therefore a useful presentational tool. Your audience (i.e. students or other teachers) can also add their ideas and thoughts to it at a later date – if you want them to! I like Wikispaces, but it doesn’t seem to play nicely with our school network. I’d recommend, therefore, Google Sites, Wetpaint and PBwiki. I use Google Sites to run learning.mrbelshaw.co.uk

Finally…

Keep up-to-date with new ways and ideas for presenting ideas, concepts and content. The following are websites that can help:

• Dennis Kennedy – 10 Tips to Improve Your Presentations with Powerpoint
• Presentation-Pointers.com
• BeyondBulletPoints.com
• PresentersUniversity.com – Courses

Have YOU got any tips to share about good/bad practice when using Powerpoint?