Thanks to Dilys and Carmen for the photos and commentary on yesterday's journey. I felt quite exhausted after two days' worth of workshops and associated travel but exhilarated as well. Ok so I don't get out much. The exhilaration was the result of perspiration with a purpose, inspiration from others' ideas and input and probably a loopy side-effect of caffeine withdrawal. Personally, I struggle with the technical skills required to pull off the audio-publication feat and think LAME and leaning on a lamp-post just about sums up my attempts. Talking to Alison after the workshop, we both felt we would have liked more of the context, overview, big picture stuff from Leigh before plunging into the task but then I was lucky enough to have listened to him in full agent provacateur mode the previous day so really had the best of both worlds. I know Carmen took notes during the session and look forward to the one, two, three of what we did appearing on SharePoint.

Blue Mountains team meeting & workshop

The morning was fantastic. I think it helped that our team travelled up in Alison's "people mover" and we had a few hours to bond & chat during the drive. Colin Tyrell royally welcomed us and we were impressed with the facilities and the vibe at Blue Mountains TAFE. Must be a great place to learn and teach.
Our meeting was so inspiring that Gail wanted to join the team - a huge compliment as Gail has been involved in e-learning at Oten for a long time and has a lot to contribute to our team. It was also great to have Anthony along from the other team -happy to be there, learning a lot, laughing along...
Anyway, as Project Manager I felt very positive about the direction that team members have chosen for their Learnscope contributions. (Even if I can also foresee a lot of time and work ahead....what's that TAFE slogan - love your work?!)
The afternoon was also action-packed and intense with our audio workshop with Leigh Blackall. I personally love people agitating in educational/political/social contexts...they're often catalysts for change even if I (and many others) don't agree with all of their their agenda or even actively disagree with bits of it. You decide!
And another thing...
wondering about the whole world of connectivism and promoting your blog endlessly through Odeo or Bloglines or any of the other social software sites. Does popular equal good? Does it depend more on the purpose of your blog? I personally don't feel the need to Billboard this blog - or does this become navel-gazing then? Your thoughts about Free Ranging and Billboard Postering? (see Sunday, June 25 2006 entry)

Getting to grips with audio

Here we all are at Wentworth Falls TAFE having an audiodynamism team meeting.

Later on we had a go at publishing audio and creating podcasts with Leigh Blackall.

Here's Alison's audiofile
http://media.odeo.com/7/2/5/alison3.mp3

Alison's strategies

These are Alison's strategies to engage learners

Second attempt!

I posted a blog last week about my Audacity problems and after checking for any replies this morning I was disappointed to see my blog did not appear! Let's see if this one does....

Alison R

Mucking around with audio files

What a weekend. Sunday, what audio-demon possessed me?! I've had a stack of CDs with sound recordings of the OTEN Showcasesitting on my desk since just before Easter, and Sunday, I thought, right, this is it! I downloaded Audacity and Lame to my old Pentium I computer. I crashed Audacity several times trying to import a bloody huge great-whopping file of 95 minutes of speakers, recorded on professional gear with mixer by a pro sound engineer (but that's another story).
Finally I got to cut up the file into several tracks. And then came the fun part. I fiddled so all the ums and oks and pauses were cut out. I cut out bits I thought didn't belong. The pruning is great. Once I'd created five seperate new tracks and was feeling pretty pleased with myself, I whipped out my memory stick to take said files to work. Somehow I'd ended up increasing the total size of the files so there was not enough space to stick-save. Wouldn't fit on a CD either. The files are now spread across 2 CDs and I'm not entirely sure I'll be able to compress them enough for web use. Arrrrrrrrggggggggghhhhhhhhhh! Think I'll knock on Andrew Downie's door tomorrow...

Podcasting Seminar

Hi - I went to the Apple Podcasting in Education Seminar this evening. There was lots of Apple promotion (what a surprise), but also a demonstration of using GarageBand which looks amazing ... but is of course only for use on MACS. I'm getting them to email me some parts of the seminar so I'll pass on the info to anyone interested (I know you are Anna). We also saw a bit about how podcasting is being used in schools. The kids love it and it does wonders for their literacy skills as they draft and edit scripts and do all sorts of other things that would otherwise have been a yawn. Exciting and motivating for educators and students alike. Parents get in on the act too. Here's one podcast site from a group of year 4/5 kids in public school in Perth http://www.podkids.com.au/
Dilys

PS The nibbles at the Hilton were pretty grown up!

Virgin Post

Don't mean to blag (showing off on a blog?) but this is my first-ever blog contribution. And given its vacuity, maybe my last. I just wanted to say I've taken my first baby steps into the blog world.

Hmmmnnnn - maybe this audio technology project has already helped my private life. My sister has a place in the bush in northern NSW and satellite broadband but no landline. She has mentioned Skype before but I just just assumed it wouldn't be possible from my humble dial-up 52 kpbs connection. For this project, I checked out the specs and although they recommend broadband & cable connection, I noticed my dial-up made it over the line...still wasn't convinced it would work until my sister called me. Almost had a heart attack when I saw the message appear on my screen. Fumbled my headset. Where was the audio jack? Then how amazing to hear her voice echoing down the line. Sis was surprisingly clear, despite a bit of a time lag . I'm officially VoIP converted! Wonder what my garrulous grandma would have thought? She lived in extremely isolated bush all her life. (She's the one in the middle.)