Recording your own audio

• Record voice in MP3 format
  • Download audacity http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ Be sure to download the LAME MP3 encoder too.
• Mr. Sloan’s screencast on using Audacity a tutorial on using Audacity.
• Work with your MP3 file in audacity. Remember to save often!

Using music in your podcast

• Be sure to consider permissions and copyright when podcasting. Here is a good site to find music. Check it out:
  • http://music.podshow.com
• Be sure to give credit to the artist in your podcast.
• Bumpers are segments of music that go in between and silently as part of your narration.
• Most often instrumentals are effective for podcasts.

Upload your MP3 file

You can upload your file into your edublog to post it online!

Podcast (definition from Wikipedia)

A podcast is a digital media file, or a related collection of such files, which is distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds for playback on portable media players and personal computers. The term, like “radio“, can refer either to the content itself or to the method by which it is syndicated; the latter is also termed podcasting. The host or author of a podcast is often called a podcaster. Though podcasters’ web sites may also offer direct download or streaming of their content, a podcast is distinguished from other digital media formats by its ability to be syndicated, subscribed to, and downloaded automatically when new content is added, using an aggregator or feed reader capable of reading feed formats such as RSS or Atom.
An audio file with RSS feed. Essentially, a podcast is a file that is cast out in digital space and it can be caught by RSS feeds.

• In 2005, podcasters were projected by iMedia to “balloon in number by 2010” growing from .8 million Americans using podcasts in 2004 to 56.8 million Americans using podcast in 2010.
• Moreover, use of technology is growing substantially, as Independent North American research company Ipsos suggests “one in five Americans aged 12 and older owns a portable MP3 Player”.

 On Friday, February 22, students were asked to review definitions of podcasting and listen to National Public Radio’s “This I Believe” podcasts.  They responded to the following questions and posted their responses on this blog to begin a conversation about podcasting and “This I Believe” essays.

a.       What do you understand about podcasting ?  What did you notice about the technology?  The sounds?

b.      Which “This I Believe” essays did you listen to?  Why did you select those pieces?  What stood out to you about the essay?  What aspects were memorable?  What was effective about the piece?

c.       What did you notice about the introduction the speech?  What was interesting about the introduction?

Welcome to our Charlotte High School Speech Blog!  In mid-January our class began and we’ve been working on analyzing speeches, speaking techniques, responding to peers as well as giving a speech of introduction and demonstration speech.  Recently we started talking about the role of technology related to communication.  We’ll start posting to this blog on February 25 and we hope that you engage in our conversation with us by providing comments to student ideas and then later our speeches.  We’re excited to share our voices with others as we blog in podcast this year.  Thanks for joining our conversation.

-Mrs. Reed

It’s been a few months since our CHS spring speech class “signed off” as the course ended, but the excitement for putting your voice out there for a larger audience has increased. School started in September with students stopping by my classroom to let me know they were signing up for speech class this year. I’ll be teaching two sections of speech this school year beginning in mid-January. Speech students from last spring have also stopped by to let me know that they are still reading this blog for comments too. Other students have emailed from college to recall the URL to share our podcasts with their new friends at school. In addition, my student’s work has been highlighted in some national venues.

Here is the summary of the project:

Charlotte High School’s spring 2007 speech class created its own “This I Believe” podcast series on this blog. Students in grades 9 through 12 wrote “This I Believe” essays following the format of the National Public Radio “This I Believe” broadcast (http://thisibelieve.org/) and then recorded their essays to create a podcast (an audio file distributed over the Internet) about their beliefs. They also welcomed comments about their speeches through the comment feature.

This is what’s been happening since we wrapped up the project:

Recently this work has recently been highlighted on the National Public Radio’s “This I Believe” website in the educator database noting how teachers are using “This I Believe” in the classroom. Visit
http://thisibelieve.org/dsp_ShowEODetail.php?city=Charlotte&state=MI&uid=179&start=0 to view the class information.

I was invited to be a co-host, with Troy Hicks, of the webcast Teachers Teaching Teachers, a weekly webcast on the EdTechTalk channel of the WorldBridges network this past May. We spoke about “Re-mediating Speech Class” and you can access the podcast of the show at http://teachersteachingteachers.org/?p=117 .

As part of this podcasting project, Troy Hicks, an assistant professor of English at Central Michigan University and a Co-Director for the Red Cedar Writing Project and I collaborated on teacher research gathering student perceptions of podcasting in the classroom. This work has resulted in the Language Arts Journal of Michigan publishing “Keepin’ it Real: Multiliteracies in the English Classroom” an article that we co-authored. The focus of this article is on the role of multiliteracies, including technology integration, as a means for authentic audiences and purposes for assignments.

Just a few weeks ago, I the National Council of Teachers of English Annual Conference in a panel presentation on “Technology Toolkit Roadshow: Using the Write Tools,” showcasing Charlotte students in my presentation titled “From the Front of the Classroom to the Ears of the World: Blogging and Podcasting in Speech Class.”

Also, forthcoming in 2008, Troy Hicks and I will publish a chapter on “Podcasting as an Extension of Speech Class” in the National Writing Project sponsored book Technology and Change: Teaching Practice in the Writing Classroom.

Congratulations to Charlotte High School students for their stellar work in this exciting project. Our community has many reasons to be proud of the efforts of these students.

For our wonderful audience, we’ll be adding more to our Digital Voices site from speech students around March 2008. I hope you’ll check out some of my English student’s work.

My freshman English classes are sharing some of their work through podcasts and a few vodcasts at http://english9reed.edublogs.org/ and we’ll be adding more content soon.

Junior English used a wiki this year to show the connections between poets. You can check out their work at http://english11poets.pbwiki.com/.

We’d love to hear what you think of the ways we’re taking our learning beyond the walls of the classroom.

Thank you for being our audience.

Mrs. Dawn Reed

Dear Readers,

Thanks again for being our audience. Several speech students have been reading, commenting, and sharing our blog with others over their spring break. We’ve also had several readers who have left comments to the speeches; thank you! I hope that you will also consider leaving a comment for them. To leave a comment, select the comment link at the top of their post and respond in the “leave a reply” box provided. Once I review the message it’ll be posted on our blog. It could take up to a day for your comment to appear, but oftentimes it’ll be posted faster than that.

Also, please remember to scroll to other pages, as we have several pages of student podcasts. To find a specific student podcast, you can select a category (or name) on the right side of the blog.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us today.

Students, I hope you’ll reply to those that left you a comment. The students from NYC have linked their names to their own pages on Youth Voices, where you can leave them a comment on their page.

With appreciation,

Mrs. Reed

Thank you for being our audience in this project!  This site will continue to be online (and a few more podcasts will be posted) so we hope you’ll visit it again and listen to more speeches.  Today is Friday, March 30 and it’s our official last day of speech class.  While we won’t be meeting as a class, many of our contributors plan to read and respond to comments after the class.  Some may not have as many opportunities to respond, so we appreciate your patience with replies.

Many people have also asked for a place to leave general responses to our project.  Please feel free to comment to this post to do so.  We’re thrilled by the support of our readers and we’d like to hear more of what you think about our beliefs, podcasting in speech and our whole project.

With appreciation,

Mrs. Dawn Reed

Mrs. Reed’s “This I Believe” podcast

Take a Risk

by Mrs. Reed

I believe in the importance of taking risks. I have loved the thrill of rock climbing and white water rafting and I think I’ll go skydiving some day, but that’s not the type of risk we have to take. Risk is definitely taking adventures you never thought you’d take, but at the same time, it doesn’t have to be overly adventurous, putting your life on-the-line, but every day pushing yourself beyond what you thought you were capable or comfortable with.

As a child it was easy to take a risk. So much is new that it’s almost necessary to do so. I took a chance and put-on my courage when I believed my brother and sisters’ stories of the boogieman and carefully crept down the dark basement stairs to find him. I used to risk getting in trouble when my siblings told me it was ok to draw on the side of our house with chalk. I got in trouble of course, but that dare was worth it.

We take the chance of failure when we try something new. We dared to step up to an unfamiliar person and ask them to be our friend. As young adults we risk asking another person out on a date or telling a secret to a friend we’re not sure we can trust. As we get older, I find that it doesn’t get easier to take a chance. We get stuck in usual routines with work, school, social engagements, family events, and other aspects of the daily grind, because they are familiar. While familiar can be good, we still need to take a chance on new experience.

As a high school English teacher, I value the risk that students take when they try something new in their writing. Yet, with grades on the line, this type of risk in general may not be favored or easy. I want my students to learn to be critical, make their own meaning and discoveries and to learn more than they expected. When I started writing my “This I Believe” essay, the topic I chose, is one that I feel very passionate about, literacy learning and the power of voice. True, I have written about this topic before. My students immediately caught on to that and didn’t allow me to go back to my usual topic; instead they told me that I should try something new. And so I took that risk.

By taking a risk and trying something new with this podcasting project, I believe that my students and I have learned about technology’s influence on communication in our world today. We’ve also learned a great deal about the value of taking our voices from the front of our classroom to the ears of the world.

About Mrs. Reed

Mrs. Reed is an English Teacher at Charlotte High School and a Red Cedar Writing Project Teacher Consultant.

This spring she wanted to provide opportunities for her speech class to have a larger audience and extend beyond the walls of the classroom and therefore she decided to embark on this podcasting project and explore the ways in which technology is influencing communication in our world today.

Mrs. Reed is grateful to everyone that helped with this podcasting project, especially Charlotte Public Schools and Red Cedar Writing Project. She is inspired and energized by her students for taking this risk with her.

Special thanks to…
National Public Radio for the inspiration to compose spoken essays following the “This I Believe” series and the “This I Believe” staff.

Jon Schmidt whose album provided music for our podcast. Schmidt’s album Powerful Exhilarating Piano featuring song “All of me” is from the Podsafe Music Network.

Thank you Jack for the introduction.

Thanks Sarah L for closing remarks.

Thank you to Charlotte Public Schools, especially the technology department for your assistance in this project.

Thank you to the Red Cedar Writing Project for your assistance with this project.

As we prepare to piece our podcasts together, we’d like to give credit to National Public Radio for the inspiration to compose spoken essays following the “This I Believe” series.

Music for this podcast is from Jon Schmidt’s album Powerful Exhilarating Piano featuring song “All of me” from the Podsafe Music Network.

End Credits for Podcasts

Check out version two with more end music. Credits with extended music

Listen in for the introduction to our speeches about our beliefs. Our Beliefs Introduction Clip

Special thanks to National Public Radio (NPR) and the “This I Believe” series.

Music for this podcast is from Jon Schmidt’s Powerful Exhilarating Piano featuring song “All of me” from the Podsafe Music Network.