Seems to be a pattern here, good news, bad news. Today I finally figured how we could listen to podcasts at our school. Not the best, most elegant fix, but it looks like upgrading student computers to Windows Media Player 9.0 will do the trick - at least we can hear them. I did 7 machines today, need to upgrade 10 more tomorrow - hopefully in time for the kids to take a listen, see how this works, etc. I don't think it's just my classroom - and probably not just my school that is having this problem. We are likely just the only ones trying out podcasting...
Another setback in the student department, as one more student directory was deleted on our server. This is just unbelievable to me for a couple of reasons:
1) I do not know who did it - and whether it was intentional or accidental - it WAS somebody in our class, I'm pretty sure
2) There is still no back up in place, no way to retrieve the data
3) There is still a MAJOR problem with student permissions - that a student could even do this is just plain unbelievable to me
But tomorrow is another day. I had a backup I burned to a CD from a couple of weeks ago, so I could put at least a few docs back in the folder - but there are about a dozen documents written by this student that are lost forever. This kind of thing is so destructive of trust - on so many levels. This hurts and angers me as much as it does the kids.
2 comments:
Have you considered installing juicereciever or iTunes on the student computers? It would be good to show them how to subscribe to podcasts, and those programs can also play them. Some school districts blog the iTunes music store including the iTunes podcast directory, however. You should be able to still grab podcast RSS feed address from places like EPN and then subscribe to them within your podcatcher software.
Wesley,
Thanks for the suggestions. I've had a shot at iTunes on my computers - no dice, I cannot get it to play mp3's off the 'net. And it's not real elegant on win2k machines, anyway. I wish I had more time to tweak some of the other players I've installed, see if I could get them working, but alas, my days are too full.... At least right now my kids can hear the podcasts - and they can now hear their own! - Mark
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