Podcast - Benefits of Author Visits

In the upper-right-hand corner of the page is my podcast, "Benefits of a School Author Visit".

The music is Mendelssohn's Symphony No. 4 (Italian). My son, Robbie (two days after he had his 4 wisdom teeth extracted!), narrates the introduction. I thought that his voice would provide good contrast to the author's (Andrea Cheng). Andrea recorded her comments on gcast (www.gcast.com) - it's free and as easy as making a phone call (no other technology required).

Funny, when I tried to use Audacity a year ago, I wrung my hands and gave up. But now, this summer, after watching a few vodcasts on how to use Audacity, it seemed pretty easy. Certainly easy as compared to Dreamweaver, anyway. It is quite helpful to me to see someone using the software while they are describing what they are doing. Then when I go to do it myself, I know where the menus and buttons are.

“Benefits of a School Author Visit – An Author’s Perspective” is just one in a series of podcasts about the educational advantages of author visits in schools. Within this series, author visits are described from the viewpoints of a teacher and curriculum coordinator; a PTO parent volunteer; a student; and a visiting author. The goal of the podcasts is to describe the positive impact that author visits have had in our district in such a way as to encourage other school districts to try them.

I think if you scroll through my podcasts, you can hear some of the "raw" data from the other participants.

I plan to incorporate this into my website about How to Do a Meaningful Author Visit.

I want more....

Yesterday I had an epiphany about websites and website creation. You see, I have never created a website - ever - at all. I've always been on the outside looking in. I had thought that I'd be satisfied to use freewebs or a similar hosting service for my website project, but now I'm beginning to think that won't give me the interactivity I need. I want more.



I read Bill and Heidi's Moodle post about how they make websites with ease and with a variety of tools. So why am I making this into such a big deal? Bill and Heidi are good models, and sometimes that's all it takes, someone to give you a nudge and then pull you along. Internet blogs and forums are famous for encouraging and helping people with all sorts of things - from car repair to losing weight.


I started wondering if there is a predetermined evolutionary process that schools go through in regard to technology. At our school, the majority of the teachers don't use computers with students, and they only use Blackboard infrequently - usually entering grades once or twice a quarter. There are no podcasts or teacher websites. I wonder what the next developmental stage is and how to speed things along. Can I act as a catalyst?
I had thought that this summer I was going to stay in the shallow end of the website creation pool with my ducky floatie, but now I want to go further, to learn a bit about how to use Dreamweaver or Expressions - to swim in the next part of the pool. I know there will be times that I will feel like I might drown, but I have faith that there are always the sides to hang onto, Chip is the lifeguard on duty and classmates will throw me a line, if I ask, so although I know I'll feel like I'm in over my head at times, I think I'll be okay.

Oh, my free trial Expressions' download is 97% done! Wish me luck - SPLASH

Bloggers Block

Yesterday, at the bookstore I saw a book called Best Bloggers. In it ,one seasoned blogger said that he never had to think long and hard for topics to write about in his blog, they just found him. I keep hoping that two topics will find me each week!

There was an interesting story about tweens cheating, lying, and stealing in online virtual worlds. The producer of Whyville said that kids are basically good, but she hires monitors to watch what is going on in the site. If a player is caught saying a bad word, a piece of duct tape is placed over the offending avatar's mouth and s/he cannot talk for several days. But kids have figured out that they can say words on the forbidden list by inserting a few extra spaces and capital letters. Some steal points and bend rules, saying that no one know who they are because they use made-up names, and hey, it's not real, after all, it's virtual. That raises an interesting question about the social consciousness these sites like Neopets, Club Penguin and Whyville may be instilling in our youth. And then I wonder..... How true are we to ourselves in SL?