Audio basics & audio social software workshop photos

Andrew Downie shows us some of the ins and outs of audio.




Alex Hayes takes us through some social software recording options.




Testing 1 2 3

Audio basics & audio social software workshop

First Tuesday after the school holidays and our team was stuck into audio again! The first session with local sound guru Andrew gave us the building blocks to play with audio - the different file formats, hardware needed and even a taste of how to edit using professional tricks. After a well=earned lunch, Alex Hayes showed us a plethora of amazing tools to create, publish & connect our audio with others. For team members all the links and notes are on our Intranet under Teams>WSI Projects>Learnscope>Audiodynamism. For others, just visit Alex's wiki, paddle around and see what suits...

OTEN Showcase 2006 presentation

This audio is from the OTEN Showcase 2006. Presenters kindly consented to the recording of their presentations. Bob is talking about a Community partnership to help youth at risk.

I used Audacity to edit out irrelevant bits like "next slide please". It was a good exercise in getting familiar with the software and gave me a few other insights into the whole business of audio production.

It's bloody time consuming! I'm sure as skills develop the process becomes more efficient and less time consuming but still...it also forced me to think about how material can be appropriate fro podcasting or can rely to much on visual cues and interaction. Downloading & listening to others seems static. As a teacher, if I produce a podcast, I need a lot of time to produce material appropriate for audio format & also technical skills to enable it. Teachers also need to coach their voices & delivery for a podcast. All that needs to be weighed up in the light of the purpose of the recording and the benefit gained.

Gadgets and guys

On the weekend I met up with friends at Bicentennial park. Rod brought his brother John and kids along and talk inevitably turned to the World Cup. I asked who'd won and his very words were "see for yourself" and he handed me his G3 file with the BBC headlines. It was a "modern" moment, like something in an ad for me. Apparently, John loves his gadgets and always has the latest and greatest. He started talking about his work and how they're up to version 2.54 of the mainframe (is that a database, I asked innocently) and he reckons all their training should be done by videocasting. We talked podcasts and bandwidths, with some world cup analysis mixed in between. It made me think of 2 things later:

1. All other women present had retreated from the conversation concerning technology
   
2. Here finally was a conversation about podcasting that wasn't between educators.

Both struck me as significant...what do you think??? This InfoWorld article may provoke some thoughts on the subject:
Is social networking just another men’s group?