Witch Goes Shopping Podcast by the Ardent Librarian

Witch Goes Shopping Podcast a video by Ardent Librarian on Flickr.

Alrighty, I had to delete my video from my previously posted attempt because it no longer worked; thus, does this mean these files are not stand alone files once they're on the blog? If so, then I don't get long term storage space from flickr? Ok brain dead; must give up. Probably making errors.

Podcasting 101 - But Don't Follow My Lead!

Doing the audio for my first ever podcast was so easy with Audacity and my Plantronics head set (I read a poem).  I searched the Audacity forum and wiki and quickly learned some start up basics and away I went.  Adding the music ... was more of a challenge.  Adding images ... even more challenging!  Aaron assures me the first podcast is always the hardest - I'll repeat those words when I'm brave enough to do another dear optimist - I'm thinking I should get my nine and thirteen year old to do one right away, so my skills don't fade out of short term memory, and I don't lose my bravery!  

Music Step
At freeplaymusic.com I found a couple of great clips, but after registering (Sound familiar? For this account I'm from Afghanistan as Canada didn't take for some reason!), and selecting the ones I wanted, they wouldn't download to my computer.  I read the help feature, but my computer won't respond to the download click - urgh (sound familiar?!).  Thus, I sent a tech help submission and we'll see what I get (closing night comment - can't remember how to get back to the site to see if an answer - too tuckered to try).  I then tried CCMixter.org (Richardson: 119).  The homepage option for "Instrumental Music for Film and Video" seemed hopeful, but searches for "spooky" and "Halloween" gave few results in comparison to Freeplay.  Nevertheless, one appeared hopeful, so I'm just trying to download that, but I stopped the download twice as it appears to enlarge to full screen and play the music while it downloads.  I have 2:57 to type here before the download is complete ... definitely "industrial" spooky!  Not a fan of this download process.  Potentially very time consuming for longer pieces, especially if you just want to use short parts. I THOUGHT IT MAY NOT BE WORKING!  Nope no download came through.  What the heck am I doing wrong?  I'm closing off for tonight ...

Well, I couldn't quite bring myself to "close" that window (took me awhile to find a file I wanted so I couldn't click out of it despite the time - sound familiar?!); thus, I went back one more time and reread the instructions in the download window (slow to be smart move) and saw "To download: Control-click on title and select ‘Save Link As...’" I was only left clicking so was doing it wrong.  I copied and pasted the embed code below (listed above the download screen), as I'm thinking that may come in handy!  Time for sleep.  Back at her ... later.

Combining Audio (Poem) with the Music Track
While Audio file importing to Audacity was straight forward, using the "envelop tool" to fade the music out so you could actually here me recite the poem, and to place my audio track to coincide with my music track took some fiddle time: more Audacity help assisted me (Audacity Forum).  The Audacity wiki I found warned me that the steps to do the former would take about an hour - gulp.   Success, but humbling.

Inserting Images
I searched YouTube as I love the combined auditory instructions with the visuals (Aaron & others can I "Google" for screenr publications too?).  I tried Tony Vincent's "Add Images to Audacity's Audio".  He made importing Powerpoint images look so easy that I thought I would try that process.  "Newbie" naivety completely hung me for awhile.  For the life of me I couldn't get my converted (more Audacity wiki reading) mp3 or wave file for my Audacity podcast to load into Movie Maker.  Two forum posts later, and no response, I resorted to our course saviour - Monsieur Aaron Mueller.  He graciously let me know that I had to add some visuals into Movie Maker first before I could import music files (Oh my Miss Newbie).  In fact, our kind leader created a trouble shooting screenr for me.  I was well on my way once again until I wanted to import those PowerPoint slides - again error message from Movie Maker that it didn't support the PowerPoint files I was trying to import - growl.

Google results listed me a few options; I'll paste the one I chose (& it worked) by Moyea - a company that wants to sell us converter software for $50 but they also kindly showed me how to do the conversion without their "easy to use" software:
Converting Power Point file into Images 
[You] cannot import a PowerPoint file into Windows Movie Maker directly, for Windows Movie Maker's supported input files are video, picture, audio or music, so we have to figure this out with some special methods.

1, Save each slide in PowerPoint presentation to picture. 
Open PowerPoint file, go to File->Save as, on the "Save as type" option, and we choose the picture formats. There are 6 picture formats you can choose: *.gif, *.jpg, *png, *tif, *bmp, *emf. Any one format would be ok. Then click "Save". A prompt will pop up, we choose "Every slide". Seconds later, a hint pops up "Each slide in your presentation has been saved as a separate file in the folder: ***".
Open the folder, you can find all the exported pictures.
Run Windows Movie Maker, you can import all the pictures and edit them, then generate a beautiful video.
The disadvantage of this method is that it cannot keep the audios and animations in original PowerPoint presentation. To avoid this, I'll show you the second method.

2, Convert PowerPoint presentation to video file.
Don't make fuss about this topic. All we need is this professional tool: Moyea PPT to video Converter. It can convert PowerPoint to almost all popular video formats like WMV, MPEG, AVI, etc. It retains the structure of original PowerPoint, keeps all delicately designed elements in PowerPoint.
You have to do only three steps: 
1, Import PowerPoint presentation
2, Choose output file format
3, start conversion.
A few minutes later, the converted video comes on earth. 
Now, you can import the video to Windows Movie Maker and edit it.

Source: http://www.dvd-ppt-slideshow.com/ppt-to-dvd-tips/import-powerpoint-to-windows-movie-maker.html


I converted my five slides to images and learned that I could convert them all at once or individually: handy knowledge when I went back and created a few more slides and then imported them individually.

My next issue was too few slides for all of my audio - oh my!  Thus I simply copied more of the lyrics slide and added in some credit slides.  I also wanted to add in a pdf image I had scanned from the book I got my poem out of.   Growl - movie maker would not accept pdf files.  Thank goodness for Google and kind people who share.  While Adobe Pro wanted approx. $6/month to subscribe for such services, I found this converter site that did the job - simply & for free  http://www.convertpdftoimage.com/.  Success my first Podcast completed - after way too many hours, however.  Now the upload to flickr step

Note - Tony Vincent from the YouTube tutorial above further suggested more Audacity tutorials from Arizona k123 Center: Offering Quality Professional Development for Educator's (search for Audacity; note the results take time to load; I haven't viewed the three results yet).

Uploading to flickr is still not a fluid process when Windows Live wants to get involved, but I got it uploaded.  When I play the video in Flickr, however, the end part is cut off - size limits?  I'm confused.

A search reveals the following Flickr upload limits:
"Free account holders can upload 2 videos a month. If you’re a pro member, your account has unlimited bandwidth and storage space which includes video content.  But! Individual video files must be smaller than 150MB in size for free members and 500MB for Pro members (more because Pro members can upload HD video)." (http://www.flickr.com/help/video/)

My podcast size is 10.9 KB (11,242 bytes), and 2:39.43 in length but I have my two other Parkview Library videos in my Flickr account, so perhaps I'm at my limit.  Thus, I deleted my original Parkview one and kept the edited version on it; I don't think I need to keep it stored on Flickr to be able to play it on my blog - correct?   I deleted my original podcast from Flickr, edited it in Movie Maker (cut slides out) to make it supposedly smaller but no go - the time is obviously related to the music - go figure.  Thus, I guess I would have to go back and edit the music track in Audacity and I simply AIN'T PUTTING MORE TIME INTO THIS ATTEMPT.  I just know I'll be faster next time!

source: http://www.google.ca/imgres?hl=en&safe=active&sa=X&biw=1366&bih=643&tbm=isch&prmd=imvns&tbnid=3kGcmhAJgpnRSM:&imgrefurl=http://www.mediafuturist.com/2009/05/audioboo-yet-another-way-to-podcast-and-share-thoughts-now-via-the-iphone.html&docid=UN4ZPf7wKAOeEM&imgurl=http://gerdleonhard.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c59be53ef0115709e98d8970b-320wi&w=300&h=200&ei=XZ-YUNO7GajqigLnoICICw&zoom=1&iact=rc&dur=429&sig=112323561956103538059&page=1&tbnh=135&tbnw=203&start=0&ndsp=16&ved=1t:429,r:14,s:0,i:110&tx=101&ty=54

(ouch - do I use tinyurl to make that source link smaller?  I made the image a live link, but suggestions how to cite this source?)

Experienced Aaron invited me to just to audio with Audioboo & not do images for this assignment, but I had a vision of future poetry projects with sound tracks and images, so I was determined to figure it out.  Kinda did, but now, yup, I'm even more behind.  Is there a silver lining to stubbornness?  Goodnight All.

Tutorials I Used

"How to Embed a Podcast Into Blogger" (Note- doesn't give step by step of how to actually record using Audacity, but great for downloading, and exporting steps)
Audacity Forum
feedback@audacityteam.org
Other one "How to Create a Podcast with Blogger" (YouTube)
Audacity for Teachers - Installation and Basic Editing (from Audacity Wiki)


Must try Bibnet ... soon.  S.

Witch Goes Shopping Podcast

Witch Goes Shopping Podcast a video by Ardent Librarian on Flickr.

My first podcast! The end part is cut off, however! Just 1:30 play time - ahhhh!

Social Bookmarking with Diigo & Challenging with Nettrekker

Like course peer Hillary Montroy I had signed up for a social bookmarking site prior to LIBE 477, but hadn't used it much (Diigo).  This past couple of weeks, I decided to give it and the online database subscription Nettrekker a good test drive to compare the two as I had a hunch they would have similar features.

As Will Richardson points out social bookmarking establishes a community of researchers (90).  In Diigo, one can open up that research community to the entire world wide web (WWW) (through Google).  Whereas Nettrekker limits sharing amongst Nettrekker Adminsitrators (the person who manages the account for the school; tis moi at Parkview Elemenatary) and SD83 teachers (and possibly just teachers at schools with Nettrekker).

In my "newbie" test run of Diigo this week, I have both enjoyed the public sharing, but also got lost amidst the plethora of links and recalled the extra time it takes to sift through the extensive hits, especially when using Google.  With Nettrekker, I've come to appreciate the quickness I can find quality educational sites.  The "Refine" search feature in particular can limit to grade level and even by BC provincial learning out comes!  I just tried my first search for "community" (a primary theme) and not only did it list the provincial learning outcome language, but also web links tied specifically to EACH one of those outcomes - does that WOW anyone besides me?

"Community" Example:
Prescribed Learning Outcome D2 It is expected that students will: identify types of work done by people in their community

Click topics below to access aligned content.

• Choosing a Career
• Community Helpers
• Community History

• Neighborhood Associations
• Our Local Community

Neighborhood Associations gave two hits:
1.  http://kids.miamidade.gov/ (American animated city)
2.  http://bensguide.gpo.gov/k-2/neighborhood/index.html (American animated city)

The two links above are American which as a Canadian educator is a continual pitfall of the subscription databases I've worked with thus far (including World Book and EBSCO), but I have been impressed with the Canadian content coming from Nettrekker for some searches.  For example, through my "community" search, I found a Sarcee Reserve, Native community link (a reserve close to Calgary, Alta. - very cool!).  I emailed Aaron my "Community" Nettrekker folder, so we'll see if he gets it and if it works to share it with us.

Overall, I know I need to learn how to refine my searches more to reveal wanted themes & Canadian content for Diigo, Nettrekker, and web crawlers such as Google.

So while it was much faster and produced strong results for my Nettrekker searches for current primary themes such as owls, community, and money (definitions, how to use money, currency), on the other hand, Diigo, turned up a lovely site for virtual owl pellet dissection, and the more I use this site, the more I see its "free" potential.  For example, 158 other people bookmarked this site.  Miz Mercer was the first to bookmark it; this person has been a member since 2007, and follows 145 people, 1 public groups, 2077 public bookmarks and has 149 followers.  While not a lot of profile info for this person, "she" obviously educates 4th, 5th and 6th grade students from the States due to her recent bookmarks, tags, and sidebar "Top Tags."  Miz Mercer has a pile of more experience then me with Diigo!  I found another public librarian and really liked her owl sites and bookmarked many of hers, and wanted to RSS subscribe to her name, but now I can't find her!  The searches produce dynamic results it appears.  Note to self - record names to subscribe to or take the leap and subscribe right away as I can always unsubscribe later!

Overall, I didn't have as much success with the themes above (or at least capped my research time) in Diigo/Google.  Nevertheless, despite using the advanced search features, I know I need to improve my research skills in both of these items.  For example, I need to take Jeff Utech's Ninja Google training course to be a more effective "Googler!"   Albeit  I have a hunch that as I Diigo network with, specifically, other educators (especially Canadian teachers and beloved teacher-librarians), then Diigo sharing will prove very powerful as 100'es if not 1000's+ contributing voices/minds will be much greater than Nettrekker contributors.  I will have to ask Nettrekker what their base number of "nettrekker researchers" are and approximately how many volunteer contributors &/or sites they have.  The latter has paid teachers and teacher-librarians trolling the net for educational sites; Netrrekker patrons can submit requests, which in turn are tested and vetted by the Nettrekker staff.  I have yet to submit and web sites to see how much "they" would involve me in that process.  Hmm, I wonder how much Nettrekker staff use Diigo or Delicious to find web sites!

Well this short'ish post actually took me a day to complete as I kept testing themes in both Nettrekker and Diigo.  The latter was hacked into this week and pirated for a couple of days (!), which caused a learning curve to go to diigo.net instead.  I wonder if info was compromised during that time.  Diigo claims not.

Well, I've got Edmodo up and running for my "Learning Commons Assistants" (new handle for my library student helpers) and wondering if I should start a Diigo, &/or use the nettrekker account with them.  Edmodo also has a "Library" in it; I wonder if it may serve as a gathering and storage area.  Hmmm, after using Diigo this week, I just may go that route with them combined with nettrekker - I think I better have a chat with the principal.

Lastly, I need to search BCTLA t-ls within Diigo and start subscribing to their RSS feeds.  Kay Treadgold was a well-known t-l from Kelowna, but she's retired.  Please recommend some BC t-ls to follow - Aaron Mueller and Gordon Powell already on my list, as well as my LIBE 477 peers!

Great fun.  Great learning.  Podcasting here I come.  S

Parkview Library edited

Parkview Library edited a video by Ardent Librarian on Flickr.

In creating the new Windows Live acct., I somehow ended up uploading an older file and not my new one - which I hadn't finished saving properly - ho hum. Well, b4 and after video viewing potential for you dear viewers!

Parkview Library Video Intro!

Parkview Library a video by Ardent Librarian on Flickr.

MovieMaker was fairly easy to use. I didn't do so well on neatly splitting and trimming, but getting a basic video up and running was almost painless. I didn't save at first and lost my first attempts, but I won't make that mistake again. For now I avoided JayCut after hearing LIBE 477 peers struggling with that software. I'll graduate into that one perhaps when MovieMaker doesn't seem like enough.

I didn't find the uploading the video to my blog particularly easy. I wanted to just embed the file from my computer, but ended up having to create yet another account "Windows Live" so that I could publish it to flickr. At that point posting this video to a new blog post was fairly easy, BUT I want to embed the video along the Parkview Library Blog sidebar as somehow an "About the Parkview Library" so it's easy for students to return to or new viewers to see it. I'll figure that out eventually. Peers suggest away, however, if you have solutions. S

Photosharing Opinions from a Newbie - For What They're Worth!

I was hoping to be able to insert a table to compare/contrast Picasa Web book vs flickr, but I don't see one in this compose page.  Due to the challenge of cutting and pasting from Word into an earlier blog post and finding out I had to import images individually once again, has made me gun shy to create a Word table or spreadsheet and try pasting that in.  Dear more experienced peers - can either be done?  

Onwards ...

Thank you LIBE 477 for encouraging me to try flickr. If I was a photo hobbiest, this site would have grabbed me long ago.  Not having high quality camera equipment, and poor photography skills, well I didn't think I had much to offer flickr.  Will Richardson's "Fun with Flickr" chapter was a real eye opener.  The potential to link youth around the world discussing images and their learning is very exciting.  To share daily events &/or highlights with parents, colleagues and learning commons communities about "field trips, speakers and visitors, special projects, and much more ..." (102), "integrating with Google Earth" (104) sounds like strong ways to build connections and engage students.  To have students take images from the Creative Commons and try such projects as "random writes" and "Make it Mine" (108), sounds so creative.  And yet, when I went to post my library "Year-End Slide Show" images, I couldn't do it!  I couldn't bring myself to post those pictures of young kids to the expansive internet audience.  Hence the quick switch to our cats.  

I realized at that moment how since having kids, photos have been mostly about capturing people, and especially kids.  I'm protective about sharing those images to unknown viewers. Flickr has made me rethink taking pictures for teaching, as well as the potential of using images of animals, places, ... the world as a spring board for learning.

Despite my interest, however, I didn't find the site as easy to navigate as the Picasa one.  First of all the personal info flickr/Yahoo wanted in order for me to create an account was annoying (I was routed to the Yahoo home page and didn't even know how to get to flickr from there; thus, I opened a new tab for flick and signed in).  Once in the editing window, double clicking on each of the images to make them bigger rather than being able to scroll to the next one while already in the enlarged viewing state was frustrating.  Albeit, I'm wondering if I simply need to change some settings.  I found I wanted to go back to Picasa on my laptop to edit with greater ease and then upload the completed images.

In comparison, I found the Picasa software on my computer and the Picasa web book much more intuitive and it appeared to offer more edit capabilities from a side bar or a click on a tab.  Further the no need to work on the account within 90 days before images and work are deleted is a real plus of the free Picasa web book.  The $25/year flickr fee will be worth it if the students and I begin using it well, however.

Thus, for now, I'll keep using picasa on my computer to store, sort, organize, and edit pictures, as well as to create albums.  Picasa web book I'll use for my people photos, but I'll begin experimenting more with flickr for such projects as animal, cultures, countries and more.  As educators start moving towards more learning commons, I see flickr and web sharing products like it to be a "go to" place for images and videos.  As a newbie to flickr and photosharing, I'm going to look at the various examples Richardson lists in chapter seven, and then hopefully get a colleague on board to try a class project out. 

On to video sharing ...