Just as I emphasize with blogging and podcasting students and teachers, I myself always consider my audience and purpose when writing for this blog. My audience is busy educators and my purpose is to help teachers do their jobs. So I purposely don't overload this blog with frivolous details.

I spend a lot of time traveling, working with teachers, and experiencing the web. There are little tidbits I'd love to share, but this blog isn't the place. I've used several new web tools to publish another blog at tonyvincent.info:

Tumblr
Tumblr lets you set up a very simple blog. There are no frills like comments and advanced formatting. Blogs at Tumblr are called tumblelogs and you can start one for free. Tumblr has a really neat feature: you can have it automatically post items from any RSS feed. The folks at Tumblr even make it easy for you to point any domain name at your tumblelog. For $1.99 you can buy a name at registrars like GoDaddy.com. I've been waiting for a place to point tonyvincent.info and now I've found it. Like many blogs, there is an RSS feed and a scaled-down version for mobile devices.

Twitter
Twitter has been described as "microblogging." It encourages its users to answer the question What are you doing? You can answer the question on twitter.com, with software, through an instant message, or by a text message. Each entry can be no longer than 140 characters, making everything short and sweet. You can make friends on Twitter and have their entries forwarded to you with the same options as you have to post. Here is my Twitter page where you can become my friend and follow my updates. Twitter provides an RSS feed for each of its users, allowing my Twitter updates to be automatically posted to Tumblr.

Digg
Digg is a social news site where the users vote (called digging) on the top stories. Most articles posted on Digg are technology related. When I "digg" a story, it is placed on my user page and in an RSS feed that is posted on my tumblelog.

del.icio.us
del.icio.us may have a strange web address, but it's a fantastic social bookmarking site. You can store your bookmarks online to be accessed from any web browser. You can also share your bookmarks with others, which makes del.icio.us a great way to discover new things on the web. My del.icio.us bookmarks can be found here. An RSS feed allows my tumblelog to be updated each time I add a bookmark.

My tumblelog at tonyvincent.info brings together many pieces of my online life and is a much more personal blog than this one. It won't be as useful to you as this blog, but it will be updated much more often, thanks to RSS.

Labels: blogging

I've posted the newest episode of Our City Podcast! Sheltered Bay is by third graders at St. Andrew's Priory School in Honolulu, Hawaii. Students from the all-girls school did an outstanding job. I've already listened to the episode twice and I know I will give it a listen again soon. Why? It it one of the best I've heard! It is extremely informative while also entertaining. The girls' voices sound loud and clear. The music and sound effects compliment what's being presented. At 12 minutes, it ends before my attention begins to wander. Bravo, I say!

With 19 Our City Podcast episodes currently online, we're building quite a library of audio by kids from cities all over. I encourage elementary and middle school teachers to use Our City Podcast in their classrooms. I've got ideas for using Our City Podcast in the classroom:

• Groups of students listen and discuss different episodes. Have the groups report back to the class what they learned.
• Set up a listening center with a different episode each week. The center could be a computer, iPod, handheld, MP3 player, or a CD player (burn the podcast to CD using iTunes).
• Play an episode for the class while they work on an art project.
• Write feedback about the episode and email it (the page for each podcast lists an email address for the teacher).
• Listen to two episodes and compare and contrast the cities in those episodes.
• Listen to decide which city you would want to visit. Tell why.
• Which city would make a good home for you? Tell why.
• Which podcaster do you think would make a good friend for you. Tell why.
• Compare the information given in the podcast with the city's Wikipedia entry.
• Find landmarks mentioned in an episode in Google Maps or Google Earth.
• What information or segment would you add to one of the episodes?
• Produce your own Our City Podcast episode. Resources are available.
• Offer some of above as extra credit opportunities.

If you aren't an Our City Podcast subscriber, click here to subscribe with iTunes. Episodes from cities around the globe will be automatically delivered to your computer as they become available.

Labels: podcast, podcasting

Perhaps you checked out the video I posted yesterday. It's hosted on YouTube, the free video sharing service owned by Google. YouTube offers no way to download video as they'd prefer you to visit their website each and every time you want to view a movie. If you do manage to download the video to your desktop, YouTube videos are in Adobe Flash format (.flv), which requires special software for playback.

There is software that will download and covert YouTube videos for you. YouTube to iPod Converter is free for Windows users and PodTube is $5 for Mac users. Or, for $15 Windows or Mac users can use TubeSock. Whatever software program you use, you simply paste the web address of the YouTube video you wish to download. The software will pull the video from YouTube's site and then convert it into a friendlier format of your choosing. I prefer videos to be in MPEG-4 format because then I can play them in QuickTime, on an iPod or PSP, or in The Core Pocket Media Player (free) for Palm or Pocket PC.

If you don't want to mess with software, you can use the online service Vixy.net. Like the software options above, you paste the YouTube URL into Vixy's web page. Vixy will convert the video for you and then save it to your desktop--no software required. Don't be fooled by the option that says MPEG-4 for iPod/PSP. Even if you're viewing on a Palm, Pocket PC, or desktop computer, that's your best option. It does take a while for Vixy's servers to convert your video, but you can't beat the price and convenience.

Labels: digital video, ipod, palm, pocket pc

I repeated the "Make Marvelous Movies" workshop here at the Northwest Council for Computer Education (NCCE) conference in Spokane, Washington. Just like in Minneapolis, I showed participants ways to film and edit video to make movies better. With just over an hour of work time, one of the groups of four educators created the video below. Although they used only one digital camcorder, they stopped, repositioned the camera, and then continued recording to give the illusion of multiple cameras. The theme of this year's NCCE conference is 007: Agents of Change and the theme inspired the teachers. Check out the two-minute video via YouTube:

Labels: digital video, events, presentations