This episode features a conversation with Karen Montgomery, Tim Fahlberg, and Wesley Fryer about why wikis should be considered a “basic ingredient” for gourmet learning in the 21st century, and how Tim’s MathCast project is a phenomenal example of using digital storytelling technologies to learn and share our learning with others. Like writing, learning mathematics should be viewed as a process and not simply a series of final answers. Meta-cognition is the ability to “think about one’s own thinking,” and Mathcasts provide a great window into the thinking and learning process of students as well as teachers. By using a $50 graphics tablet and free digital technologies like VoiceThread, PBwiki, and software from the Jing Project, learners of any age can (and ARE) creating MathCasts to document and share their learning. The ability to comment on and provide feedback on the learning and ideas of others via VoiceThread provides superb opportunities for asynchronous, thoughtful mentoring. Possibilities abound! Check out our podcast shownotes for links to resources discussed in this episode, including our “Geek of the Week” websites! Happy Holidays to everyone from your hosts at The Technology Shopping Cart!
Technology Shopping Cart Podcast02: Wikis, VoiceThread, and MathCasts [71:32m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1817)
Friday morning after Thanksgiving day Kevin Honeycutt and I spent some time “in the carpool” via Skype discussing educational technology tools for which I am thankful and other topics. Kevin’s description of the skypecast conversation is:
In this carpool, Wesley Fryer shares some of the tech tools he is thankful for. Besides being back in the driving questions truck, (recently out of the shop with a new engine) spending time with Wesley is one of the best things that’s happened lately. Wesley talks about the value of voice thread as a creative, collaborative tool. We discuss the value of the opportunity to work directly with kids and the value of lighting fires by doing projects that really count. Wesley is about making human, relevant connections in making the case for technology in schools.
I was glad to learn this evening that Call Recorder for Skype, a $15 program I’ve used for a year or so to record skype audio calls now has been updated to also record Skype video calls. Excellent! The program integrates right into Skype (for Macintosh) so you specify the settings you want like other Skype preferences:
My main complaint about audio-only recordings with Call Recorder in the past was that they were in QuickTime movie format. To get them into MP3 format, I had to use QuickTime Pro to export the audio as an AIFF file, and then used iTunes to convert the AIFF to a 32 kbps mp3 file. That multi-step conversion process will still be required with this updated version of Call Recorder when I’m working with audio-only conferences, apparently. There is not an available option to record audio-only conferences in mp3 format. Despite this shortcoming I think still this is a great program, and even better now that it also records video (on both the local and remote sides.)
My main caution to people using this program to AUTOMATICALLY record all skype calls (or using ECamm’s other program, ConferenceRecorder, to record iChat calls) is to remember to clear out your saved calls folder regularly, especially if you make a lot of calls. I hadn’t cleared out mine in quite awhile, and learned tonight there were over EIGHT gigabytes of saved recordings in those directories. Ouch! That’s a lot of hard drive space, especially on a laptop!
The fact that skype/iChat calls can be automatically recorded with software like this means people should assume whenever they talk to someone on a Skype or iChat call, the conversation is being recorded. I am under the impression that by FCC rules in the U.S., to legally record a phone conversation the person has to notify you of the fact that it is being recorded up front. I remember years ago hearing some kind of tone in the background when a POTS conversation was being recorded, but I haven’t heard that lately and guess that may be a thing of the past. It’s good to keep in mind that just as emails can and often are archived for later use, recorded audio (and now even video) calls made over the Internet can be archived as well. Be careful what you say and share!
Are there programs anyone knows about for Windows-based systems that record both audio and video skype calls, like Call Recorder for Macintosh? Both Call Recorder for Mac and Powergramo for Windows systems are commercial programs. It would be great if free software was available for skype recording. In the case of Call Recorder, $15 is a small price to pay for this powerful functionality I think. (Free is always nicer, however! Unfortunately some of the programs advertised as “free” skype recorders are just limited demo versions than can’t record skype conversations beyond a certain length.)
If you’re not attending the SITE conference next week in San Antonio, you can still participate “live” in at least one event via skype. Lynne Schrum’s and Anne Thompson’s fireside chat on Wednesday, March 28th, 2007 will be available as a “live” skypecast! The session description on Skypecasts is:
This panel continues a conversation started at SITE 2006 Conference, in which doctoral students and professors discussed the challenges of preparing for and beginning a career in instructional technology. This year’s panel will describe the activities of SITEmentor, a collaborative mentoring effort across four universities, and solicit feedback and discussion from the audience. Doctoral students and those who mentor doctoral students are especially encouraged to listen in and contribute.
The Women of Web 2.0 skypecast from last week (Wednesday night to be exact) that included an interview with me as a featured guest is available online. There were a few technical problems with some echo effects and Skype bandwidth (I think related to my hotel connection in St Louis) but overall the interview went well and was a lot of fun! The intro song for this skypecast is pretty long, so don’t give up when you start listening… the show starts after a minute or two with “WOW moments of the week” and then goes to the interview.
If you’re online now and want to join us, the WOW2 interview and chat is about to start in 15 minutes! (8 - 9 pm US Central time.) Link here to join the EdTechTalk chat room!
I’m scheduled to be a guest on the Women of Web 2.0 live skype chat this Tuesday, February 27th at 6 pm US Pacific time. If you can please join in! I’m not sure what all we’ll be discussing, but it will be live and I’m sure it will be fun! Feel free to edit the wiki page for February 27th on their site and suggest more questions if there is something in particular you’d like us to address and discuss!
If you’re not familiar with WOW2 (and I’m not referring to World of Warcraft 2, btw) check out their site at www.womenofweb2.com!
To see what date/time this will be where you live in the world, use this link from timeanddate.com. In GMT time it will be Wednesday, February 28, 2007 at 02:00:00 (2 am.) Sorry Ewan!
This podcast is a skype recording from yesterday’s presentation (on November 10) at the 2006 Hawaii Library Association titled, “Creativity and Updating Mindware: Hardware and software are not holding us back!” During the session Jen Wagner (from southern California) and Graham Wegner (from Adelaide, South Australia) skyped in to share their ideas about teaching beyond the textbook in the classroom of the 21st Century. They also discussed how they are continuing to learn from other educators about web 2.0 technologies and teaching methods, and their perceptions of the recent K-12 Online Conference.
The 10 pm GMT timeslot (4 pm US Central time this Saturday) for the “When Night Falls” 24 hour skypecast is still available for someone to moderate as a volunteer. Also, I am willing to give up (and my wife would really prefer if I did) my 4:00 am GMT timeslot, which is 10 pm US Central time Friday night. (Use this link to see what time it is in your area.)
The first screencast (WMV format) describes using the free Windows version of PowerGramo to record a Skypecast, and then convert the OGG format file into MP3 using Audacity.
The second screencast (MPEG4 format) describes using the demo version of Call Recorder on a Macintosh computer to record a Skypecast, and then convert the MOV format audio file into MP3 using iTunes.
All the programs described in these screencasts are free except Call Recorder, but its demo is fully functional and just limited in how many days it can be used before it must be purchased for $12.95.
There are a lot of choices for free Windows-based programs that record Skype calls and Skypecasts, but the others I have tried all limited the amount of time you can record with the free version. Powergramo is not time-limited, so that is why I chose to use it. I am not aware of a free program on the Macintosh side for recording skypecasts. Call Recorder works very well for me, and I found its price to be quite reasonable. If anyone knows of free skypecast recording software for Macintosh please let me know, or of better free software on the Windows side than Powergramo.
This podcast is a recording of a skypecast held on October 11, 2006 to discuss the culminating event of the K-12 Online Conference: a 24 hour long skypecast conversation titled, “When Night Falls.” In this skypecast, conference conveners and others discuss the goals for the event as well as ideas for helping insure it is beneficial and successful for everyone involved.
“When Night Falls” will be the culminating event of the upcoming K-12 Online Conference, and we are envisioning it as a 24 hour around the globe skypecast to discuss ideas, takeaways, criticisms and suggestions of the conference. Darren has set up a wiki to permit different volunteers to moderate one or two hour blocks of time for the skypecast. Rather than create a 24 hour skypecast that would have to be moderated by a single individual (and probably few of us have the desire or energy to do that) Darren is proposing that people volunteer and take turns. We are thinking at this point that each moderator will create their own Skypecast for others to join, and these links will all be provided on the wiki.
Darren has suggested, and I think he is correct, that we want the agenda of discussion for each segment of “When Night Falls” to be pretty open so people can discuss the topics of greatest interest to them. There are several other web 2.0 tools we are proposing for use during the event, including Vyew and Tappedin.org. (Tapped-in has been around for quite awhile so it may not qualify as “web 2.0,” but to the extent it does allow people to write the web instead of just reading it I think its environment should qualify!)
Please try to join us if you can this Wednesday evening (9 pm central) to chat about ideas and suggestions. Also, please post ideas and suggestions you have related to this event idea here or on Darren’s latest blog post about this event.
Also check out the “When Night Falls” wiki site that Darren has setup, and feel free to add content and ideas there, as well as sign up to be a moderator. No prior skype or skypecasting experience is required!
Technically speaking, I did further compress the video as a MPEG-4 file using QuickTime Pro. The settings I used reduced the screen resolution from 800×600 to 640×480, and the file size from 136.7 MB to 11.3 MB. This was needed because uploading and downloading a 100+ MB file for a seven minute clip is really not realistic. YouTube, along with Google Video, uses a server-based processing alogrithm that converts uploaded video to Flash (.swf) format. This allows the videos to be displayed in any web browser that has the Flash plugin installed. The Windows-version of SmartBoard software’s screen recorder application records to a proprietary AVI video format, that requires subsequent conversion to Windows Media format using a free conversion utility available from Microsoft. See this page for more details, look under the heading “How can I share my AVI file in SMART Recorder Video format with someone who doesn’t have SMART Board software?”
If you’re interested in screencasting, VoxMedia has a nice collection on their wiki of screencasting tools to check out. A variety of both commercial and free screencasting software tools are available. The main reason I chose to upload to YouTube this evening rather than Google Video is that Google Video delays publication and sharing of uploaded videos based on a “preliminary review process” while YouTube does not. I am not thrilled with the converted quality of this video, so I’m going to upload to Google Video and compare results.
BTW, if you didn’t hear, Google announced it is going to purchase YouTube today. It will be interesting to see if the editorial policy / pre-screening policy of YouTube changes to match Google Video’s policy after the acquisition.
This podcast is a recording of a presentation made by Stephen Downes during Global Learn Day on October 8, 2006 and recorded via Skype and Call Recorder. I apologize for the keyboard noises which were inadvertently also recorded along with Stephen’s excellent presentation. Despite this distraction, I think Stephen’s message was superb and well worth sharing. He discussed the essential elements of the Elearning 2.0 environment, similar to what Tim O’Reilly has termed Web 2.0, and discussed eight essential characteristics of effective networks in this environment. I think Stephen does a wonderful job synthesizing technological innovations with learning theory and pedagogy, providing us with an excellent blueprint to use when creating and interacting in blended learning environments with learners of different ages.
Jennifer Wagner is hosting a Skypecast this Saturday, September 16th at 4 pm Pacific time (6 pm Central) to discuss WikiSpaces and answer two basic questions:
How do I use Wikispaces?
Why should I use a Wiki?
Sounds like a great topic for the “Personal Professional Development” strand of our upcoming K12 Online Conference! (Soon to be formally announced!)
Jen asks people to email her in her blog post, but I found the Skypecast event online by doing a keyword search on the site for “Wikispaces.” If you want to participate, make sure you have Skype installed and working. You might also find my post from July “Guidelines for Participating in a Skypecast” helpful. I’m not sure at this point if I’ll be able to join in or not, but if I can’t it’s good to know Jen will be posting an archived recording of it on her website as a podcast.
I just love the read/write web!
On the subject of WikiSpaces, I want to pass along the fact that WikiSpaces has “launched our program to give away 100,000 wikis to teachers.” So, it’s not only a great weekend to learn about WikiSpaces from Jennifer, but also a great time to sign up for a free wiki for you and/or your students to use!
Wesley Fryer is the author of Moving at the Speed of Creativity. DISCLAIMER: The opinions expressed herein are my own and not necessarily those of my employer. I am wfryer on Diigo.
Technology Shopping Cart Podcast02: Wikis, VoiceThread, and MathCasts [71:32m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1817)
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