More to explore on the a/v blog interface

Months ago, cogdog discovered that Odeo allows recording of audio segments up to three minutes long. That is, if you are logged in as a registered user.

The Create on Odeo studio is here. Options include recording or adding audio from the web. Then, if you wish, you can create a podcast or embed the audio in your blog.

Let's get cracking!

ODEO - Blogger Interplay

This post incorporates a RadioOpenSource program, Global Warming: Coal — It’s Cheap and Dirty (November 14, 2006), that I found at ODEO. Actually, I was looking for something else, "Is Global Warming Real? Climate Change and Our Energy Future," by Robert Dunbar (2004), but the program link to Dunbar's talk is defunct in ODEO (it is still available from the iTunes Store).

I created this post from an ODEO to Blogger uplink with an embedded player (above). ODEO to blog settings were easy in Firefox, even though the ODEO blog set-up interface doesn't display properly in Camino, and Blogger doesn't recognize ODEO as a secure interface, either.

To use the blog setting functions and generate automatically titled blog entries at ODEO, you have to register. However, registration may not be necessary if you just find a program you like, click the "Embeddable Player" link, and copy/paste the embedding code from ODEO directly into a draft blog entry.

Sustainable community scenario

Wobbleys
Originally uploaded by pabeaufait.

Where Rick suggests various roles for member participants in WinK, that is, in a message posted within a less than public BaseCamp pilot, I find it impossible to respond with a picture. So I'm posting this here.

The illustration above is a [third] try to get at "other possible forms of participation and types of members" than just blogging learners and blogging teachers, which Rick suggests "might be a key to [community] sustainability" (Extending roles and styles of participation, November 29, 2006). A list of types might include core developers, founding members, volunteer or hired agents, facilitators, active blogging members, and possibly veteran commentators.

To suggestions regarding roles and styles of participation, I'd like to add one for a unified venue. I think that things are getting pretty twisted discussing WinK blogging and community development in a venue separate from WinK (namely BaseCamp), rather than unifying and consolidating activities, discussions and resources in one bloggable, community-friendly venue.

A unified venue, with searchable, feedable, public and protected components, might well minimize necessity of navigating back and forth, and transferring, transforming, or recreating bits and pieces from one venue to the next. At present WinK-related activity seems scattered from the blogosphere, to Rick's website, to Joe's wiki, to a BaseCamp project, and possibly to unseen glaciers, cirques, and summits beyond.

Blogging - Sixth Month in

It takes tremendous effort both to model and reflect upon practices for learning and teaching, but perhaps there is a knock on effect from using technology for both purposes: Keep trying!

Since I'm exploring learning and teaching with technology, I'm bound to try things that don't work - at least not right away - either for me or the folks I'm trying things with. Yet there are times when the technology fails to work, which isn't always obvious; as it should, which isn't always transparent; or when we fail to use it as effectively as we could, which may hardly ever be evident to novices without near-peer role models.

Among the techno-trials I've undertaken are blogging and wiki building, inspired by apparent success of colleagues. Earlier on, I decided my purpose in these endeavors was to find out how blogs and wikis might complement or extend upon conversations on a mailing list launched for purposes of continuing education.

As I struggle through uptake of tools and techniques (blogs, feeds, interfaces...), I find my time if not my attention deflected from purpose-full interaction with fellow learners and educators, into technical and problem-solving activities. That the edu-techno-learning curve would be so steep perhaps will come as no surprise to those reviewing the curve, once they're over the hump.

As far as modelling goes, my blogging pace leaves plenty of room for improvement, at least on this blog in isolation. Though I've commented, drafted, edited, and tagged potpourri entries recently, it has been over a month since my last published blog entry about switching to blogger beta.

In retrospect, I'd like to think that I've suitably distributed my time and energy amongst a project-related mailing list, two blogs, and three wikis (one directly project-related, the other two course-related) these past few months. It just may take years to whip up just the right blend.