Session 10: Final Podcast

------Podcast------
i

SHOW NOTES: The Audio Montage - Using Audio To Evoke Emotion

For my last assignment I've included two podcasts. The first podcast I've produced is an audio montage using a collage of press conference sound bites, choral singing, natural sounds recorded in the field, a contemporary song and various sound effects.

This audio montage isn’t a political statement nor is it intended to support or condemn a particular administration’s decision-making process. The intent of this podcast montage is to demonstrate how a collage of audio produced can evoke an emotional response from the listener. Audio collages offer a challenge in the editing process by requiring a discerning use of elements such as sound, timing and story development.

PRESS CONFERENCE SOUNDBITE DATES

April 9, 2003 - Iraq will be disarmed of its weapons of mass destruction
August 26, 2002 - Dick Cheney - There is no doubt Saddam has WMD
March 20, 2003 - Donald Rumsfeld - What is the task, does it involve finding the WMD
October 7, 2002 - George W. Bush - Mushroom Cloud
June 24, 2003 - Donald Rumsfeld - Does Iraq have nuclear WMDS - fact number one
July 12, 2004 - British Anti War Demonstration
September 14, 2004 - Colin Powell - Have you found stockpiles of WMD in Iraq
October 7, 2004 - George W. Bush - There are no WMD in Iraq - confirmed
January 14, 2005 - George W. Bush interview

THE LETTER

The letter recited in the podcast was comprised from excerpts of letters from US soldiers in Iraq. These letters were published November 11, 2003, in the New York Times. The excerpts were taken from the following letters:

Excerpts of letters from Army Capt. Joshua T. Byers, 29, of Anderson, S.C., who was killed on July 23 when a bomb detonated under his vehicle.

Excerpt of a letter from Army Pvt. Robert L. Frantz, 19, of San Antonio, who was killed June 17 when he was struck by a grenade. The letter was postmarked June 15.

http://www.nytimes.com/

------Podcast------
i

In addition to the audio montage podcast I’ve included a second audio download as an example of editing sound, rhythm and tempo. To help demonstrate this process, my old friend Vox Humano, along with his backup singers the HuManiacs, perform the Clash’s hit song, Rock the Casbah. Download here!

To help you develop your own editing skills in sound, timing and story development I’ve included the following challenge. If you are interested in writing and recording your own version of the song:

• Download the instrumental midi file by clicking here!
• Use the online AT&T voice synthesizer to select the various voices found here!
• Cut and paste the Casbah lyrics found below into the voice synthesizer and edit the WAV file into a second audio track B (the midi file is on track A).

Now you, too, can Rock the Casbah with Vox Humano and the HuManiacs!

The Clash › Rock The Casbah Lyrics:
Now the king told the boogie men, you have to let that raga drop. The oil down the desert way has been shaken to the top. The sheik he drove his Cadillac, He went a cruisnin down the ville. The muezzin was a standing, on the radiator grille.

Chorus

The Shareef don’t like it. Rockin the Casbah. Rock the Casbah. The Shareef don’t like it. Rockin the Casbah. Rock the Casbah

By order of the prophet, we ban that boogie sound. Degenerate the faithful, with that crazy Casbah sound. But the beduin they brought out, the electric camel drum.

The local guitar picker, got his guitar picking thumb. As soon as the Shareef had cleared the square, they began to wail

Chorus

Now over at the temple. Oh! They really pack’m in. The in crowd say it’s cool to dig this chanting thing. But as the wind changed direction. The temple band took five. The crowd caught a whiff of that crazy Casbah jive.

Chorus

The king called up his jet fighters. He said you better earn your pay. Drop your bombs between the minarets, down the Casbah way. As soon as the Shareef was chauffeured outta there, the jet pilots tuned to the cockpit radio blare. As soon as the Shareef was outta their hair the jet pilots wailed

Chorus

###

Session 9: Educational Blogs

Consider the Use of Blogs In Education...

Blogsites can provide a communication space where teachers can foster curriculum for students to develop writing skills, collaboration with students and the sharing of ideas. The student blogsite also offers the student a personal or shared learning journal to report the work being accomplished in the classroom.

In fact, I can make a modest list of possible approaches in using this Blog technology in the classroom:

a) Blogging software allows for easy peer review for students and teachers
b) Allows easy access to experts or mentors from outside the classroom
c) Audio blogs can help students work on reading and pronunciation skills. (Students’ pronunciation of words can be recorded. Posting these audio files on a blog allows students to later play the files to hear how they sound.
d) Blogs can become classroom access points where students can access archived handouts, view posted homework assignments and read additional teacher comments
e) School clubs, activities and sports teams can use blogs to post scores, meeting minutes, and links to relevant issues and topics.

I find myself asking the following question: As an educator, am I surfing the crest of this new particular wave of technology where using one web application becomes a one approach fits all purpose? Or am I surfing toward a hidden undertow that will water down, perhaps even drown, the student’s learning process? Without the student’s participation, and their involvement being more than acquiring assignments or directions, what I see is a website. That is all. There is nothing new.

Blogging can effectively become a workable classroom activity because of its functional use and easy appliance. It’s the direction of how blogging will be integrated into the curriculum that will determine whether the student creates or collaborates and utilizes the blog posting process thereby further enhancing the learning process.

The blog post is still an asynchronous format in communicating. Under this guise, I still favor the Electronic BlackBoard or Moodle applications. The direct scaffolding of comments is in unison to the same topic or created with a new post topic, unlike a blog where postings are time stamped but don’t offer a way to respond to posts set apart by topic. That would call for a new blog post entered only by the blog owner.

Blogs offer consumers of knowledge an abundance of information. The excitement of considering blogs in education lies in the use of Rich Site Summary or RSS (Really Simple Syndication). The use of a feed aggregator provides a new form of receiving desired communication from wanted sources. Teachers who assign students to create their own blogs can easily keep track of what students have posted by subscribing to their students' feeds and checking their aggregators regularly. Parents can subscribe to feeds such as their children’s homework page or the school’s activity page. A classroom teacher who wants to stay up to date on the most recent tools in educational technology can create a search at Feedster, subscribe to the retrieved results, and will be notified automatically with any newly listed reference. Educators and school districts can also use this syndication process to communicate with students, teachers and parents.

Ideally, as educators we need to recognize not only instructive methodology but the tools to improve learning, then place those tools into the students’ own hands so they can construct knowledge by developing a self-discovered process.

Session 8: Podcast Again!

------Podcast------
i

SHOW NOTES:
Adapted Physical Education:
How Using a PDA in the Field Can Make Tracking and Reporting Goals More Efficient.

This week’s Ape City’s, Ape Call podcast is a telephone interview with A.P.E. Specialist Kimberly Oliver, from Southern California’s Corona-Norco Unified School District.

It’s amazing how much paperwork is required from the Adapted Physical Education Specialist. This week’s Ape Call podcast addresses how using a PDA in the field can make tracking and reporting goals more efficient. A.P.E. Specialist Oliver also explains how she prevailed over a data merging obstacle when attempting to transfer PDA field data into the district's required I.E.P software.

The links below will allow you to download the files discussed during this podcast:

To down load a copy of the described PDA Progress Template Excel spreadsheet: Click Here!
To down load a copy of the described Progress Template on Goals Word document: Click Here!

Disclaimer: Files downloaded from the EDTECH ETCHINGS blog site are provided 'as is' without warranty of any kind, either express or implied. Without limiting the foregoing, EDTECH ETCHINGS, APE-CITY, APE CALL PODCAST OR ANY PERSON INTERVIEWED make(s) no claim or warranty that:

the files will meet your requirements
the files will be uninterrupted, timely, secure or error-free
the results that may be obtained from the use of the files will be effective, accurate or reliable
the quality of the files will meet your expectations
any errors in the files obtained from the EDTECH ETCHINGS web site will be corrected.

DOWNLOAD FILES AT YOUR OWN DISCRETION AND RISK.

###