duber dot com: jd media blog

Jim Duber's media blog is an excellent example of integrating text, audio, and video into a blog.

mugshots project

Sergei Gridushko from Belarus has started a project called mugshots which looks like a great way to get students writing creatively. The idea is for the students to post a photo of their favourite mug or cup, etc, and describe it, say why it's important to them.

Bee has also joined the project and has posted her photos and comments in her live journal.

This one could take off I think...

Bloglet

Bloglet: "offers an email subscription service for your blog..." that boasts an easy set-up, stats, and more.

Wink - free tutorial software

Thanks to Edugadget (plain-talking technology reviews for teachers) for this: Wink is a free piece of software that is used to create tutorials. Their website says:



"Wink is a Tutorial and Presentation creation software, primarily aimed at creating tutorials on how to use software (like a tutor for MS-Word/Excel etc). Using Wink you can capture screenshots of your software, use images that you already have, type-in explanations for each step, create a navigation sequence complete with buttons, delays, titles etc and create a highly effective tutorial for your users."

The way it seems to work is with screenshots.You can add notes, etc and the software creates an animated presentation. there is a demo on the Wink website.

Why use audio in a blog?

The debate in the weblogging Yahoo Group about use of audio in blogs:

Lesley Graham, who decided to offer  an audio quiz on her blog states that:

"What we are doing in the ESL class (usually in the language lab or in the multimedia lab) is preparing people for real life situations in which they might not have any textual/visual input. Think of all of the times in a day when you listen without looking: when chatting on the telephone, consulting your voice mail, listening to talk radio, having a conversation as you walk beside someone without seeing their lips move or their facial expressions, listening to an oral presentation in a darkened room..... I believe that my job is to train learners for all of these situations in realisitic, or even heightened, conditions. The next question, of course, is why would you want to do all of this in a blog rather than on a plain vanilla web page?"

Aaron Campbell :

"I like Nathan's response and agree with much of what he says, especially viewing voice as  performance. Personally, I rarely listen to sound files that are posted, unless I feel like  being entertained or I know beforehand that the sound file is worth listening to. It just  takes too much time. I prefer the textual medium as a means of taking part in online conversation and gathering information. It is fast to read and easy to search. I can't skim an audio file. My advice to most bloggers would be to use sound sparingly and only when necessary.

Lesley brings up a good point though: sound has a very important role to play in language learning. The potential to bring the myriad spoken voices of the world into the classroom itself, both synchronously and asynchronously, adds an exciting dimension to the learning activities that occur there. As we have seen already, there are many ways we can use sound in ESL/EFL classes, and many more ways to explore. I certainly will be trying to experiment with sound in my classes starting in April"

Tom Walton:

"I agree with Nathan on the use of audio: "If a transcript carries the message, there is no reason for
audio."

Can't help thinking that we're getting so wow-ed by the technology that we're gonna use it whatever, even if it really makes little pedagogical sense (and however time-consuming it is to produce it).

Here, however, is an interesting article on a scenario in which it just might make sense, "telling tales with technology":

http://www.techlearning.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=60300276

John Hibbs:

"The first reason is of course for students to listen to themselves, from the archives; and to have them listen to others including native language learners.

The second reason is that if you are giving a keynote, to a live audience, it is great to record and listen to yourself. Like singing in the shower, you might not sound as great as you think you do.

The third reason concerns "radio" - to include internet radio, conventional radio and all things related to "pod casting". All of these lead to a wider reach - either for purposes of pedagogy or for purposes of "merchandising yourself or your institution" to a wider audience.

The fourth reason is that very often one can emphasize that portion of the commentary where there is real passion."

Videoblogging

From Marco's blog come a link to Momentshowing: Adventures in video blogging which has lots of interesting posts and links for anyone interested in video blogging or vlogging.

After listening to Michael Coghlan's presentation last Friday, I'd really like to try this out as I think it has a lot of potential. Here's a few ideas that ran through my mind during Michael's session, which I'd like to develop on at a later date:

* Set up an audio / video / photo blog diary : something for students to look at for extra listening practice,etc and to help bridge gap between teacher and students. Encourage students to do the same? I think the best idea would be to make it a rolling blog, and instead of archiving posts, simply change them. The idea of doing this would be to save on space and to encourage students to logon frequently to catch posts before they are taken off.

The question is, would students actually bother going to the site? One way of introducing them to the habit of visiting would be to set homework assignments based on this. Later on, the best way would be to make the content so interesting they really want to keep coming back. That is a challenge, however. But worth an experiment I think.

* Take advantage of my students' fascination for mobile phones with cameras and use the video facility to create blog posts?

My Image Students' Blogs

I am using blogs again with my students of Image. This is a group of Polytechnic students studying English as a subsidiary subject (once a week for a 2 hour class).

I started using weblogs with the group last year and it was successful. This year I asked the 2nd years if they wanted to continue and they all said yes. It was a lot easier introducing the 1st years to the idea of blogging too as they were able to ask their classmates (the 2nd years) if they had any doubts.

So far we have managed to set up the blogs and start posting on subjects related to cinema and photography. I need to sort out a few problems with links / invitations from individual Student blogs to the Tutor blog, but otherwise it's going well.

I have to give this group assignments and use what they produce in their blogs as part of their evaluation.

The Tutor blog can be found here: http://image-sound.blogspot.com/