Table 2: Audio Manipulation

Disclaimer: Any product posted herein is solely practice and NOT intended as a finished product.

Number One on the checklist was "Turn on laptop microphone and record using laptop microphone." I was a little confused. I'm guessing laptop microphone means the built in microphone (that picks up a voice, but also all the background noise. See my podcast in Thing 21, where you can hear a doggie having a bad dream in the background...hehe), but what application were we supposed to use to record? Hmmm..skipped this one.

I moved on to Audacity. I eavesdropped on the people around me and heard at least four people mention that for them, Audacity didn't seem user friendly. I've used it and been okay with it, but then I haven't done really advanced projects with it yet. I recorded myself reciting a part of Robert Service's "The Cremation of Sam McGee" and played it back. Yes, I'm finally getting used to hearing my own voice and I guess it's not so so bad. :-P

Then I checked out Incompetech (www.incompetech.com). This was new to me, but yea, I really like it. It's a music download site, but what I thought was great is that you can choose music by "feel" (mood), such as "ominous," "lighthearted," or "triumphant." Wouldn't it be fun to have students choose background music for parts of their favorite books? And at the same time, they are learning about mood and being exposesd to mood words. It's awesome! Dowloading is easy, too, except the day I did this, I kept getting a "page not displayed" error, but it magically solved itself. Probably just a temporary network or server glitch. I imported a piece of music into Audacity and edited it so that I had just the section of it I wanted and it was the length I needed.

Table 4: Video

today our library professional development was intensive technology training...an extension or practice of more 23 Things things, but also some new stuff for me. This post is part of that staff development. Here is my disclaimer: any product posted herein is not meant as a final product, but instead as a "work in progress."

The Table 4 task was video. The first thing on our checklist was downloading a video from TeacherTube and posting it here. I downloaded a cool video of "Ma and Pa Kettle" math (thanks to A. Reynolds from Terrace Elementary for pointing me to it!) and here it is:



Then, on to YouTube, which of course, we couldn't access from inside the district. I think that's a shame. Yes, I know there is lots of inappropriate material on YouTube, but there is also lots of great stuff. It would be like banning search engines because kids might search something inappropriate. Besides, I guarantee any kiddo with Internet access at home knows the ins and outs of YouTube. I know elementary students who can record their own video, edit it with MovieMaker, and upload it to YouTube! I think we're remiss in teaching students to be responsible consumers and producers of information. Okay, okay, I'll get off my soapbox now.

The next thing I did was play around with MovieMaker. I imported my own video that I took of my son's dwarf hamsters with my Flip. Import was successful...EXCEPT for the audio. For some reason, the audio, my narration, was much too fast after the import (but the video speed remained "true"). It was actually kind of funny because it seemed as if the hamsters were doing the "talking." :-) I played around with "cutting and splicing" and transitions. It will be fun to play with MovieMaker some more. Oh, when I tried to save, though, it was VERY slow. In fact, I thought it had frozen because I'd waited about 5 minutes and it still hadn't saved. Lo and behold, though, I left it running through lunch, and when I returned, SHAZAM! It had finished saving. Woo hoo! I'll be interested to see if that is a problem that continues.

Thing 23: Summin' It Up

Woo hoo! I made it, an especially sweet thing since this is my second attempt at this. :)

Library2Play and the 23 Things has been a marvelous learning experience. I know I won't incorporate EVERYTHING into my repertoire right away, but the opportunity to become familiar with all the tools has been priceless. My favorites are podcasts, YouTube/TeacherTube, Rollyo, blogging, Google reader, wikis, and the wide world of mashups. There a couple that I think are awesome, but I've found it more difficult to internalize their use. Del.icio.us, for example. I see the potential, and I know it's really easy to use, but for some reason it hasn't become part of the "way I do things" yet. I'm confident it will, though. It will just take more repeated use for it to become second nature to me. I can't wait to get the students involved in podcasts and online image generators and wikis. Actually, the entire faculty!

What I think is great about all this 2.0 stuff is that it's in its infancy. New applications are being developed by brilliant people everyday, meaning that there will always be something new for people like me to learn. I never want to be the "oldster" who's out of touch. I guess that means the kickball captains will have to host new "games" on the "playground" each year! I wanna play! I wanna play!

(And the anthropologist in me is fascinated by the way our world is changing...how our social interactions are changing, etc.)

I'm going to keep working on commenting more. For some reason, it was hard for me to do. And as I try all these great, new Things with my students this year, I'm going to post my experiences here on this blog.

Keep "Two-point-oh-ing," everyone!

(photo courtesy of Emile! at Flickr)

Thing 22: Nings

As a novice librarian (I only have one year under my belt), the TeacherLibrarianNing is awesome! It's a great place to ask questions and solicit advice. With "back-to-school" right around the corner, I was particularly interested in the discussion thread about how to "jazz up" the beginning of the year, or what kinds of activities make great school-year starters. I signed up a long time ago, but confess that I haven't ever really utilized it. Duh.

Thing #21: Podcasts

Confession: I've been dreading this one. I've been worried about what my podcast would be about, what equipment I needed to do it, and hearing my own voice. Ugh! Now that I've done it, though, I'm thinking, "Wow! That was fun! I want to do another one!" I guess what I put together is considered a vidcast? Do I HAVE to make that distinction? I used PhotoStory 3 to make a booktalk photostory of this year's Texas Bluebonnet Award Nominees. I got the covers of the books and the book descriptions from www.amazon.com.



Sorry about the extraneous noise. I ended up doing the audio on this some place other than home, where my microphone was, so I just used the built-in microphone on the laptop. If you listen closely to the narration for Marvelous Mattie, you'll hear my sister's golden retriever in the background yelping as she has a bad dream. Hehe... I plan to go back and redo this so it's more professional, but I wanted to get what I have up on this blog for 23 Things. Also...*ducks sheepishly*...I got tired before making it to every book, so after Lawn Boy, there's no narration.

(It IS taking a while to process the video.)