Thursday, March 30, 2006

Student newsletter podcast

I've been thinking for some time about how to get more than my classroom involved in a podcast, blog, whatever. Yesterday I met with the student reporters at my school for a special podcasting session. They each read the article they had written for the March edition of the Jr. Seahawk Newsletter (which I've been publishing online since 1994). Thankfully, it was one of those months where not every classroom remembered to write a report, so there were only eight reports to be read. They did a wonderful job, we had several redo's, and a couple of perfect reads. It was fun - especially getting to know and work with kids in other classes, different grade levels, etc. Managed to get eight clips recorded, using Audacity, during recess and my prep period.

After school I recorded an intro and ending - I had really wanted to have kids do this, but there simply was no time to get that together - next month, for sure! Anyway, while I had an hour before my second Family Internet Night, I figured out how to put the clips in order on one new track, and I added my own to the beginning and end. Burned it all on a CD after the meeting, and brought it home.

That's when the fun began - not. I found this music I wanted to use as a lead in/out - a midi track - which of course I found out will not play or record in Audacity. So I used my little Total Recorder program, Winamp, and Audacity - to play, record, save in different formats, equalize volume levels on all the different reports, resample the audio in at a lower mp3 quality, etc. It was crazy, and extremely frustrating at times. At 11 PM I started to get somewhere. At 1:30 AM I had something I could present to the world as a first attempt. Nowhere to go but up:

The March 2006 edition of the Jr. Seahawk Newsletter, as a podcast. Best way to enjoy is by following along with the pdf version -

Links to it from:

But will I remember what I did in April?!!!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Funny!

I'm with you! I spent a Friday night digitizing video and uploading it to the server, then copy\pasting the url to five different student Blogmeister accounts.

What are we doing!?

Well, I know very clearly what we're doing. We're doing it for the simple and pure joy the kids will have when they see\here their work published out there to the world.

good night. . . .

Mark Ahlness said...

Hi Gordon,
Your work with your kids is amazing! Their latest vodcast is absolutely wonderful. They are lucky to have you. Have they been asking about next year - like when you're not their teacher anymore? Enjoy your weekend - Mark