KleinPod: Podcasting in Klein ISD

For whatever reason, my external hard drive does work on school computers. It works just fine on my laptop at home and my desktop at home. I’m still buying a new external hard drive, however. 320GB, baby! I figured that with all of the sound files I’ve been collection, I’ll need a bigger storage device eventually.

Today, my students used the LMS discussion board to listen to the musical selections that they chose last week. Each student found a copyright free song that they thought represented Vistas, and they uploaded it to the discussion board with their reasons for choosing it. They then had to listen to everyone else’s song and make a comment about each of them.

Thursday and Friday will be spent writing a script for their segment of the Getting to Know Vistas podcast. I plan on having them record on Monday and Tuesday. I still don’t know how I’ll set that up. I think that each group might need one full day working in the studio, so that means that I’ll have to come up with some kind of stations activitiy for next week.

1. Record the podcast and edit in the audio.
2. Fill out a Podcast Rubric for a peer’s podcast.
3. Blog about their experiences with podcasting so far.
4. ???
5. ???

I’ll figure something out. If you have any ideas, please post them! I am hoping that I can get the rest of my final exams figured out today, otherwise I’ll be doing a test review the traditional way. At least I have a back-up plan!

We are still working with PBWiki and the settings with Lightspeed. I will be a little frustrated if this site doesn’t go through – one of the main benefits I see in technology and this podcasting class is that we can connect with the community. The community doesn’t know much about us, and what they do know is often incorrect. Same thing with other educators in the district. I want the community to see how amazing the school is, and that we do learn, and that our students defy their expectations.

Well, we are just about ready to start podcasting. We have spent a lot of time working on a wiki for the school, and I do want to finish that before we start working on the podcasting, but we keep having setbacks in that area as well.

1. Our LMS wiki is only viewable to our class, and we want a larger audience.

2. www.pbwiki.com is blocked for student use and while I have requested that the site be unblocked, I have not gotten a response just yet.

3. I decided for rough draft purposes, we could use the LMS wiki as an editing tool. I spent about 45 minutes working on topics when I realized that depending on what IP address the user logs into, you may or may not see the content. So, my students can’t work on the LMS wiki either. I could go back to the traditional way of editing, but they are so excited and motivated to use the technoogy that I feel like it would be a punitive measure to go back right now. Whoever heard about a class that’s actually excited to edit?

In other news, I have been trying to gather good podcasting resouces on the internet to use with my students. However, it is very hard to find podcasting resources when every web page that our filters places under the Audio/Visual category is blocked.

I am trying to find sites that have interesting and relevant podcasts, sites that have copyright-free music and sound effects, and sites that have specific information about copyright laws that affects podcasters. I really want to hit copyright law hard before we start podcasting because I think it’s something that the students really need. From anticipation guides, I have gathered that students think it’s ok to copy and share music that was not obtained off of a CD and that you can legally DOWNLOAD music but you can’t legally UPLOAD music. They were so convinced that they even attempted to find web resources that supported this claim.

In any case, I cannot access these resources. I fully understand that some music sites need to be blocked, but I feel that by blocking copyright-free web pages, we are encouraging students to illegaly share and downlaod music. As a 1:1 campus that uses Web 2.0 stategies, music and images are integral parts of our classroom tools.

I have asked for the desired links to be reconsidered, mentioned that this is for a grant, and even used links that were suggested by NetTrekker, the school safe search engine that our district pays for, but so far have been denied.

I suppose that if this issue is not solved by the end of the week, I can start out teaching the students how to use Audacity. Since I am not that familiar with it, I think I will ask Stephanie Green to come in and team teach with me that day. It will be a great time to show off Atomic Learning as well.

At least I always have a back-up plan!

We made it through Hurricane Ike with little damage other than the eight days of school that we lost. For a school on an accelerated schedule, that much time lost is devastating. We finally went back to work last Wednesday and we have been playing catch up the entire time.

My original plan was to publish the podcasts on the district’s LMS site because they have an RSS feed, but we were having serious problems with LMS and Lightspeed the week before the hurricane, so I was never really able to post an RSS feed and see how the students responded to it. Luckily, any problems we had this past week have been short-lived and are usually solved if we restart Internet Explorer.

The best news is that I have created two podcasts for my students! One was going over the answers on a quiz that they took and the second was a test review! I’m so excited! I really hope it works, because at this point, it really saved me a lot of time in the classroom. This way, I also made sure that each class got the same material.

The problem that I’m facing now is publishing these RSS feeds. We are using LMS right now, but I can’t publish them to iTunesor Podcast Alley because I need a public forum to post on. I’m going to poke around on Edublogs and see what options are available. I am a little concerned about this, because Klein’s system does not seem to be very compatible with Edublogs. No one can get an e-mail from Edublogs! I’ll look into that, because I find this to be a very user-friendly site.

Looking back at previous posts today, I already feel months behind. I had wanted podcasts ready to go for the first day of school. Here it is, almost the end of our grading period, and I’m just starting to identify the kinks rather than solving the kinks.

At least my group of students is excited about the process. Right now, I feel like I’m leading them on because I haven’t really given them much podcasting. I’m working on the curriculum as we speak, but for now, I feel like I’m dragging the process out. The great news is that they all seem to be on board and eager. I think they feel special because they know they are involved in the pilot project for a grant. I won’t say that they are looking froward to TAKS testing reviews, because they aren’t, but when I explained my TAKS plan to them, they were agreeable. The students who still need to take TAKS are going to create specific tutorials for middle school students. Each student will create tutorials for the objective that she/he needs to pass.

I passed out the TAKS study guides yesterday. As I expected, they groaned and all told me to keep the book. I agreed to do so, but had them look at their TAKS objectives and pointed out to them what we’d be podcasting later on. I didn’t hear a single groan – in fact, they were asking me questions. I’mnot going to go so far and say they were excited about TAKS tutorials, but I think they are now looking at it in a new way. It was really what I needed to keep my head afloat after the past few weeks.