Supporting teachers in ICT & whiteboards

In Edublogs, when you write a post, click the tab - Code - and paste the html code that Podomatic provides, into the code page - save - publish

However Edublogs say I can insert a video directly - here we go - click this: chickens

Background - Podomatic is a site offering Podcasts - audio and video. The video is on their site. They offer a ‘badge’ /banner to link to your page. They offer you a piece of html code which you have to paste into your Post. I was checking it worked. And when you click on -chickens- the video downloaded to my computer to watch it here. I could also have saved the video to my computer.

I have been toying with making Podcasts using Podomatic.com . It works with audio and video and this is an experiment to see if I can embed their video player in my blog - here goes:

so did it work?

It’s the buzz word around the media, and seems very trendy, but there are lots of types of Podcasts out there, and it’s important for the educator to know exactly what they want from a Podcast service. Some even realise that they don’t need a Podcast and a Blog would do better, or just put the files on the school website for downloading.

I’m still looking for the perfect solution:

• got to be free / cheap software
• got to be simple to use and to publish
• got to cope with audio, video and slideshows

Am afraid to say only the Mac solution is a one-stop-shop solution, but it’s hardly cheap.

There are some great free online solutions like Podomatic.com but the quality, and realiability  isn’t all that great at times - but it is free and very easy.

Podium is improving but will be much better when it can cope with video.

The actual making of the pods is easy with Audacity, MSPhotostory and Windows Movie maker [or similar] but sending the files onto the website is usually a task for the technician as it involves FTP details etc. You can waste hours trying to sort this out.

Ask for advice

I run various practical courses for teachers and we often consider where the resources are going to be put.

The school website is the natural home for most of them but there are issues of:

• time it takes to get your stuff checked by management then placed on the site - this can take weeks.
• the DIY factor - many teachers want their own immediate solution to putting resources online
• So many useful sites and resources are banned by over zealous network protectors

I often suggest that they set up their own website or blog, and put their resources there, and tell the students what this address is. Then students go to your site and download files or just listen to audio / see video files for their enrichment/homework.

I can see that now Blogs are so aesy to use, and free, and you can embed lots of resources in them, lots of teachers will be attracted to them - I’ll certainly promote them