Academic Aesthetic 154

Three in one week! Am I back on the ball again? We'll see.

• The new Teachers 2.0 site is looking for a few good writers - ones willing to post somewhat regularly.


• Still looking for good wikis about podcasting, although suggestions have started to roll in...


• garageflowers suggested this wiki, which is good but not quite what I'm looking for.


• njtechteacher has a large list of podcasting links.


• That list of links includes this podcasting omnibus by Wes Fryer - great, but too much for my presentation.


• Bud the Teacher is taking a break from Twitter. So far, so good.

Academic Aesthetic 153

This episode is a call for help! (No, not THAT call for help ...)

As I announced on Pownce, this will be my third consecutive year as a presenter at MICCA. In the past I've used wikis as my "handouts," but I'm not sure I should create a new one from scratch if there's already a definitive one out there that's ready for use.

So my question to you is this: What are some of the better podcasting wikis out there, and should I use one of those for my presentation or make my own? I'm leaning away from reinventing the wheel, but I won't mind building one from the ground up if the wikis that exist don't meet my needs.

Let me know what you think.

Academic Aesthetic 152

Download .mp3

Just audio this time. I have a dentist's appointment tomorrow and I'm afraid that I will be unable to speak at all afterwards, or at least not well since my face may or may not be numb.

Aaaaaaaaaaaanyway, today's 'cast shares three links, all taken from this list of del.icio.us links that include the tag "teachers20." (The tag was created so that the links could show up automatically in the Teachers2.0 Twitter feed, which is a lot more popular than I am. My creation has usurped me! .... oh well. We also have a Ning site, if you're into that.)

• How to add Chroma key (green screen effects) to a movie for FREE!


• The Truth About Autism: Scientists Reconsider What They Think They Know


• Liam's Pictures from Old Books (Thanks, lindiop)
  

Academic Aesthetic 151: Old New Media

This is my first podcast recorded MOSTLY using Apple's Photo Booth, a program that can record still pictures or video.  It was never actually intended for podcast creation, as I found out the hard way.  As much as I loved playing with the software, half the clips I recorded had no audio whatsoever.  This phenomenon was totally random, so towards the end I was resorting to recording short bursts and then immediately checking to see how it turned out.

Photo Booth may be a fun toy, but from now on I think I'll be using other software for my podcasting needs.

Oh, and today's episode has me rambling on about how people are using Twitter and its clones in lieu of recording podcasts and posting blogs.  I don't think this is a bad thing, since any message that can be summarized in 140 characters should be presented that way - short, sweet, and to the point.

However not every idea can be made so brief, as evidenced here.

I think Twitter is a good thing because  that means that we can expect blog entries to be reserved for more complex ideas, while posts that show off a new website or tell us what you had to eat can be reserved for another feed entirely.

Totally Self Referential

Because it was something I've wanted to do for a while, and because, against all odds, it was still available, I am now the proud owner of AaronBSmith.com.

Don't bother going there yet, for two reasons:

1. It takes a while (sometimes a day or two, although I have seen it work in a couple hours...) for new domain names to actually work right.  It's a little complicated.


2. When it does start working, all it'll be doing is pointing here.  Why? Because I don't know what to do with it!

That's right, I actually registered a domain with no idea what to put there content-wise.  The important thing for me now is that I have the option of putting something there without worrying about another Aaron B. Smith snatching up that URL.  Believe me, there's enough of us.

But the question of what to put there is nagging me a bit.  I don't want to move content from here over to there - I've spread myself to thin before - but what SHOULD I do with that domain?

Comments welcome.

Academic Aesthetic 150

So, here I am two weeks into the new year and I've yet to get started on my new year's resolution. I thought I was getting ahead of the game by writing up some podcast scripts after Christmas, but now they seem kind of dated and, well, I can't find them.

Oh, well.

All things considered I have been quite busy. Those who follow my Twitter and Pownce accounts may have noticed I post almost nothing on the weekends - and with the exception of my planning days were I'm constantly in front of my computer to fill out all sorts of paperwork, a lack of postings means I have a lot on my plate.

But enough of that before this turns into an "Oh, I have too much to do, I shouldn't even be recording this right now!" podcast.

What?

It's too late for that?

Feh. Moving on, I'm really liking Pownce. For those of you not in the know, Pownce is very much like Twitter in that it's a micro-blog format. Both are designed to share small messages, links, and so on with others. Pownce goes further in regards to media sharing and organizing your friend lists. You can actually put, say, all of your friends who are art teachers into one group, math teachers in another, science teachers in another, family in another, and so on, and send links and messages only to those groups that would be interested in that subject.

I'm sure my sister, for example, doesn't really care about the highlights of last week's faculty meeting. This way, she wouldn't see it.

Now Twitter's still in the running. The tools for embedding Twitter into web pages seem more robust than the ones for Pownce, and if you're a text messaging fanatic Twitter will win hands down.

But for how I use it, I like Pownce a lot more. I loved it when I first got an invite to sign up, and I was reminded of how much I liked it a couple weekends ago when a huge chunk of the edublogosphere tried it out for a day at Steve Dembo's request.

Alas, the following week most of them were all back on Twitter. A social network can have all the features in the world, but it's still nothing without a critical mass of members. Twitter has that, and except for an all-too-brief moment, Pownce doesn't.

There are solutions, of course. Apps and websites that post to multiple networks, services that will pull RSS feeds into Twitter, but I'm not happy with the apps and I've already gotten complaints about my Pounce messages being cut short when they're cross posted to Twitter.

I'm still holding out for more people to make the switch to Pownce, but I know that, just like last time, before long I'm going to end up staying where more of my network is rather than continue talking to an (almost) empty space. Social networks are sticky that way.

Academic Aesthetic 149

That's right, I'm podcasting again! And how about that, this isn't even a horrible recorded-in-the-car-using-a-cell-phone-cast, either!

I won't speak for everyone, but for me December is a time to look back on the past year and ask "Where did the time go?" Of course it's also a time to look forward and ask "Wait, I have to do all that again?" Then you get to sit down, eat a Christmas cookie, and say "I'm getting too old for this!"

...ok, I added that last one this year, since I turned 30. And now everyone who's older than me can laugh at how the young guy thinks he's old. Go ahead, it'll relieve some stress.

But seriously, as I look back on this past year I really slacked off on being a content creator. Compared to the year before I barely podcasted or blogged at all, and my Flickr photo postings have been sporadic, at best. This new year, my resolution is to fix that.

You could say this episode is an early start on just that, but I need to set up a regular schedule again - and this time, I need to stick to it. Maybe even record shows early so I have a backlog in case of emergencies. We'll see.

I've also tweaked the Teachers 2.0 Twitter account to make it, in my opinion, more usable. I used twitterfeed.com to set it up so that any time someone saves a link in del.icio.us and tags it "teachers20," it'll show up as a Teachers 2.0 tweet. The only glitch is that it has to be a NEW link - going back and adding the "teachers20" tag to old links won't make them show up on Twitter. Of course you can still write something a little more in depth and post it on the Teachers 2.0 Ning site, and that'll show up in the feed as well. I'm hoping that since we now have well over a hundred members we'll start to see these services used a little more often.

I have a lot more to say, but I still like the format of a short and sweet podcast, netcast, or whatever you want to call it, so I'll just hold that over until next time. Hey, now I won't have to brainstorm a new topic!

Until next time, stay subscribed, fare thee well, merry Christmas, and happy holidays, everyone.