Archive for April, 2006
GCast.com – A great resource for EduPodcasters!
Huge kudos to John Blake for pointing out this one out to me.
GCast.com is a sister site to GarageBand.com, which has long been known for being a great source for ‘pod safe’ music. GCast is similar to Audioblogger.com but has some great features that give it the nod in my book.
First of all, it’s perfect for mobcasting. You can dial up a phone number, enter in a pin and record a podcast via phone. My one problem with Audioblogger was that you had to enter quite a few numbers before you could record your podcast, too many to remember. This is nice and simple. A phone number of your choosing and a 4 digit pin. Easy.
Second reason I like it is that it creates an RSS feed for your recordings automatically. If you don’t have or don’t want a blog, you don’t need one. It’s an instant podcast, enclosures and all. In fact, it’s even iTunes compliant!
Third reason I’m a big fan is that you can upload your own mp3 files! You were never able to do that with Audioblogger. You recorded via phone and that was it. Gcast is providing free hosting for your audio! Only stipulations is that it has to be an MP3 and encoded at 44.1khz. Not a big deal at all.
Fourth reason is that if you DO have your own blog, they provide full URL’s for your podcasts so you can handle your own RSS feed if you want. They also provide a groovey little player that you can embed into your blog or html site to allow people to play your podcasts.
There’s a bunch of other features as well, but I’ve seen enough to be a convert. I tested it out a bit and find it extremely easy to use. Unlike OurMedia.org, the publishing process is pretty speedy. It took about three minutes for my test podcast to go live. I’ve had it take hours to go live on OurMedia.org and Archive.org.
So if you’re looking for free hosting or just getting started in the world of podcasting, definitely check out GCast.com. Looks like a winner to me.
Couple gigabytes in your pocket
There are a million flash drives out there, and at this point I have so many 32mb drives that I don’t even keep track of them anymore, but this is a deal that I might have to jump on myself.
You can by a SanDisk 2GB Cruzer flash drive at Best Buy for the bargain price of $69 bucks. It says $81 on the site, but there’s a 12 dollar mail in rebate. Not a bad deal at all.
Heh, anybody else remember when you had to start partiitioning hard drives because of a limit within windows (or was it the file system) that wouldn’t work with any bigger sizes? Now you can have 2 gigz in your pocket for less than three figures.
Thanks to Discovery Educator Katie Warren for alerting Jannita Demian who passed the info on to the team.
Join me for the next EdTechConnect!
This is how crazy things are around here, I haven’t had time to let ya’all know that I’ll be speaking at the next EdTechConnect! If you don’t know what it is, EdTechConnect is a series of live webinars featuring some really prominent people in the field of Education Technology. In the past few months, the list of presenters has included Hall Davidson, Kathy Schrock and Alan November. Not bad company, eh?
Anyway, it’s a live webinar starting at 5:00pm EST on Wednesday. The presentation I’ll be doing is a brand new one for me that I’ve been developing for the Connecting and Collaborating Conference. It’s all about making use the internet enabled devices that most teachers and students have easy access to. I’ve found some really interesting tools that I think most of you wil get a real kick out of seeing. Some standards, some new ones, but I think it’ll really make people think about their school’s policies regarding mobile devices.
Anyway, if you want to check it out, whether it’s for more info, to cheer me on, or to mock me mercilessly, you can go to the EdTechConnect page for more info, or just click here to sign up directly.
Oh, just an FYI, take the description with a slight grain of salt. Had to make some changes to adapt it to fit a 45 minute time frame. Hope to see you there!
Cosmeo in the news
That new website I wrote about, Cosmeo, was reviewed in the Wall Street Journal today. Pretty positive review too! They did have a few technical issues playing some of the videos in pesky browsers like Firefox (my browser of choice), but that didn’t hold them back from giving it a thumbs up.
"Though Cosmeo is heavy on videos, it offers much more, including encyclopedia articles, links to related material on the Internet, and what it calls Brain Games, like hieroglyphic translations and building a volcano. And most of the material comes from educational sources.
…
Though we ran into a few technical problems here and there, we found the service to be a useful and engaging learning tool that can help sutdents study at their own pace, in the comfort of their own homes. What’s more, parents can learn how to help their kids."
Windows on the Mac! And this time, it’s not a hack
Via Kim Lim (and thanks for the IM!):
It’s official. Windows XP is now completely supported on the new Intel Macs. If you listen closely, you can hear the crowd in the street outside cheering. Yes, this means you can have all the style of a Mac, the simplicity of a Mac, the wonderful integration of the iLife suite, and STILL be able to boot up XP for those times when you need to get access to those Win only apps. Or, you could even use Windows during the day for work reasons, but use OS X for managing your life at home. 
While this had been done before, there were still a few bugs and not all drivers were supported. Additionally, it was a hack and beyond the scope of geekiness that many people are willing travel. However, this is an official Apple release.
Guess the tablet will have to wait, I need to get me a Mac!
Connecting and Collaborating in Michigan
I’m still pretty new at the whole ‘presenting’ thing. I mean, I taught for quite a while, and that’s nothing more than presenting, but it’s one thing to present for kids and another thing to present for your peers. I always get pretty darn nervous, but once I get going I usually feel right as rain. I’m pretty passionate about the stuff I talk about, and so I just roll with that.
Next month, however, is an entirely different ball game though. I’ve been invited to keynote the Connecting and Collaborating Conference in Michigan. This is the first time that I’ve ever had my picture in the program, which must mean something. Want to know how new I am to all this? The photo I gave them must have been from a screenshot because it has a mouse cursor in it! Yeah, that’s right. I’m a total n00b at this.
Seriously though, I’m really looing forward to doing that particular presentation. It’s a whole lot of ideas that have been bouncing around in my head for quite a while and now they’re all finally starting to gel together. It’s kind of magical the way it all seems to mesh into a story of sorts.
I’ll also be presenting a couple other workshops, one on grabbing hold of RSS and making it really work for you, and another on taking advantage of the stuff you and your students have in your pockets (iPods, palm pilots, PSP’s, cell phones, etc). Both of them should be a nice combination of education, fun and sheer geekiness!
The conference itself looks fantastic. There are some great workshops lined up and they’re ALL hands on, which is way cool. So if you’re anywhere near Holland, Michigan, swing by and lend me some moral support! Oh yeah, and learn something too.
Yahoo buys web 2.0 – ALL of it.
My favorite April Fool’s post this year: Yahoo! Search blog: All Your Web 2.0 Are Belong To Us