Sometimes I feel like a Twit!

So this is the blog we have been waiting all term for...the Twitter blog! Well I can't honestly say that this is really the case for me. I can hardly wait for this course to end so I can pare down my Twittter list so I don't have to know who is at what airport or going to what town...On the bright side I realize by the number of parodies of Twitter on YouTube that I am not alone...here is but one example. This may sound quite negative, but I really don't get Twitter. Of all of the social networking tools that are available to us Twitter is the one that I don't seem to be able to weed out the good stuff from the "digital noise" as William Ferriter calls it of daily events that I do not need to know in people's lives. Maybe this is because I read to much of everything and haven't been able to skim well enough for Twitter. Perhaps it is because I don't have a cell phone and Twitter is more for the mobile set. After all is it important for me to know that there are no seats available in the Detroit Starbucks - when I live in Union Bay? Do I need to know that @Mastermaq is "sleeping as of 22:31 via Ping.fm" ( and by the way how can he type that tweet while he is sleeping? -that seems suspicious to me!)  But aside from the mundane and the banal what can Twitter really do for me? If I could sift through all of the sand and various other sediment and debris flowing down the river of life in Twitter tweets I'm sure I can find some really valuable particles of gold. But like all prospectors it just doesn't seem like I'll strike it rich when nothing seems to sparkle in the bottom of my pan for such a long time. But alas I shall track my Twitter journey in the three parts starting with...

Learning About the Tool

I created my Twitter account at the beginning of the course in January. Prior to that time I had heard of Twitter but really wasn't interested in it; after all there are blogs, wikis, webpages and emails to read, write and make note  of...who has the extra time? I would log onto the Twitter site and catch up on what people were talking about...at first just the other members of our class and the people on the list we were told to follow for the class. Gradually I added a few others, Andrew Hallam a teacher turned investment advisor whom I taught with many years ago, the Twisst site which I read about while browsing tweets and others of personal interest. I now follow 32 different "twitterers."

Twitter, I have learned,  has its own language including hashmarks, retweet, direct message and others as found on this video from butterscotch.com.  (The complete series of 10 videos to learn about Twitter can be found here)Learning the language makes it easier to navigate around Twitter and understand the flow of conversation that is constantly buzzing around as well as making better use of the limited s[pace you have to "tweet." I particularly find the hashmarks useful as one quick entry into the search area of the appropriate hashmark and I can see if there is any news for the group. For instance if I want to know what people are talking about in Edmonton I can type #YEG (yeg is from Edmonton's airport code) into the search and any hashmarked tweets will appear! For this course I use #tldl in the search box. I have to admit that the program is pretty slick..the feature for direct messaging is really fast...just type a 'd' at the beginning of a tweet  and the "What's happening?" title becomes "Direct Message:" although this does cost a couple of the 140 allowable characters per tweet!

I have also changed the look of my Twitter page using the "settings" and then the "design" buttons. These are fairly limited, but there is also the offer to use Themeleon to customize your page further. I didn't use time to explore this option as it required registering on another site and I'm happy enough with the simple customization offered on the design page.

The last thing I'll talk about are the links in Twitter. To me they are the most useful part of the whole Twitter experience. When I take the time to sift through the airport visits, coffee shop hassles and other bits of useless information I am left with the links... the golden sparkle in the bottom of my pan, the lifeline to new ideas and information that relate to my career, personal life and interests. Due to the immediacy of Twitter I have never followed a link that has been out of date... the information is always current. This is a big step up from some websites that seem liken they are rarely updated. This is where the list of peole I follow begins to make sense to me... the sharing of resources and information...maybe Twitter isn't so bad after all?!

Using the Tool for my Own Personal Learning

Personally I  can see Twitter as a way to find and share resources, but as I mentioned before Twitter is the "right now" medium and as I do not have a cell phone I feel left behind by its 'What are you doing right now?" type format. I think my use of Twitter tells me that I am of an older generation of web users that seek information and not of the "new" Web 2.0 generation that use the web socially. My brother-in-law is a great example of a Web 2.0 user as he sends updates to say he is at the ferry line-up or at the Starbucks or whatever...this drives me nuts...I don't need to now this stuff! But there is stuff that I need to know and that is as my role of parent...currently my children are very young and are not using Twitter but if they were I'd definitely want to know what they were sending out....Jeff Ramone in his article "Private Eyes Are Watching You: Twitter Oversharing and Its Bizarre Real-World Consequences" brought to my attention that using FourSquare and Twitter actually allows people to know where you are...this also means where you are not which relates to the public awareness that is being raised at Pleaserobme.com. As a parent I am concerned about my children oversharing their information and becoming vulnerable to harm in some form. Having said this as an example of the dangers of twitter I must balance this with the lighter side of Twitter...the website Overheard.it quotes silly or sad quotes and I have found many gems here including the hashtags #whywecantfireteachers and #Educationiskey which leads me to...

Using the Tool in terms of Teaching and Learning

This picture is definitely worth a thousand words...many of the things that can be done using Twitter in Edcuation.
Much like wikis and nings I can see a huge potential for Twitter in teaching and learning. despite my earlier rantings of the digital noise produced by Twitter there are many reasons to embrace this technology. In William ferriter's article "Why Teachers Should Try Twitter." he outlines the most obvious which is to make new contacts to share resources, but he also talks about how the use of Twitter has deepened his understanding of using technology to differentiate learning for students.

Twitter can also be used for other activities as cited on the TeachPaperless site here. The article this link leads to also stresses that Twitter can be set up to only allow certain followers  (ie a class) which addresses some of the safety concerns of Web 2.0 use in the classroom. Once again through this article I can see that we need to teach our students the proper and responsible use of sites like Twitter which is only possible if these sites are not blocked at the district level. I really see a need to free up the access of the internet including Twitter to help our students make sense of their digital world...gee it looks like I'm fighting for Twitter...I've come a long way in just one blog post!!:) Sometimes I feel like a Twit for not seeing all the good of Twitter at first!

When Facebook gets too scary...the Ning is the Thing!

It seems that everyone has a Facebook account these days. Well maybe not everyone, but according to the latest Wikipedia article Facebook has a staggering four hundred million registered users and My Space logged its one hundred millionth user way back in August of 2006. Clearly many folks are taking advantage of the social networking opportunities being offered. According to Will Richardson (2009, page 6) more than sixty percent of adolescents in the US are using social networking sites which is a figure that surpasses the use by educators.



Learning about the tools.

Facebook (FB) and Ning are the main tools that I explored this week. Although I opened an account on FB prior to this class, I have used it very little primarily to keep in touch with family and share photos and the “What’s happening this week” type of thing. I have had an FB account now for some time although I could not find a record of the date that I opened the account. I remember it being very easy to open an FB account. The truth is anyone who is over 13 years of age and has a valid email account is welcome to open an account on FB. Finding and adding friends is the cornerstone of Facebook. Davies and Merchant (2009 page 16) say that establishing and maintainingconnections between participants is the salient feature of social networking sites. To establish these relationshipsis a quick (usually) and easy process. The snag to the quickness is that if the friend you are trying to find has a very common name you may end up searching through many similarly named people to find who you are looking for. This problem is compounded as many people do not show a photograph on their profile page unless you are already a friend making identification very difficult. Add to this the fact that they may not even be a registered member of the group and the search may be in vain. This happened with two people I tried to locate this week.

Once establishing a group of friends their information will appear on your “feed” and this will keep you up to date with them.

Unlike other web 2.0 sites that I have explored FB doesn’t have an affinity that links the members together such as the photos in Flickr or the videos on YouTube but rather you are "mapping' the set of connections that everyone has in real life.'" (Davies & Merchant 2009) page16 In FB you choose who you are connected to (or they choose you with your permission!) Once a member with a list of friends you can update your own profile by adding text to the "What's on your mind" box which is very much like a Twitter feed.

There are many ways to waste time on Facebook including numerous games. I have not played any of these games, but often would receive “updates” and “invites” to games from people who are my FB “friends.” One of the best things that I learned about FB is that you can “hide” any of these updates which remove some of the clutter on the feed.

I do not belong to any groups although I just discovered that we have a group on FB for this class…did I miss something? I have requested to be added as a member…

I also recently discovered that FB lists all of the birthdays of my friends by the month…no more excuses for missed birthdays…I did wonder why I got birthday wishes from people on FB…now I know!


FB also suggests friends to add based on friends of friends ( a good example of the Common Craft video!) The site will tell me how many mutual friends |I have with the suggested person. FB also prompts me to send friends a message or “poke” them…I really think many of these features are a waste of my time as I really only want to share some photos and keep in touch with a few friend and family members…speaking of which the younger members of my family and my friends children all seem to have most of the four hundred million people listed as their friends! Well no…not actually but my nephew has over three hundred and my friend’s daughter has two hundred sixty-five…this number is down significantly from the six hundred and fifty-eight she had when her father entered the fray and limited her participation…she also had the security settings completely off so anyone could see her information…

For many of the reasons outlined above I prefer Nings. They are like FB but better…at least better for the education system as a teacher, school or district can have all the advantages of Social networking without the risk of being completely public.

I recently joined the Ning for Comox Valley Teachers. The advantages of Nings are that they are subject to approval for membership…this prevents many of the pitfalls I see with the commercial social networking sites such as FB. There are privacy setting on FB that allow users to limit who sees what information and this is automatically set for account holders registered as being ages thirteen to fifteen for their protection.

Tools In Terms of My Personal Learning

FB is not for me for my personal learning…the opposite is true for the various Nings that I belong to. FB is used for personal communication with family and friends and now that I am able to limit the amount of SPAM in FB by using the “hide” button it is more streamlined for this purpose. As a parent I would certainly be aware of and try to communicate openly with my children regarding their use of any social networking site like FB. I am not sure that most of the friends on many people's lists are truly friends that they have a real relationship with as suggested by the founder of Facebook Zuckerman (Davies & Merchant 2009 page 16)

Unlike FB the Comox Valley teachers Ning and other Nings that
I belong to (Classroom 2.0 for one) have limited application for personal learning but I use them more for professional learning.

Tools in Terms of Professional Learning

The Nings are great for education as they remove the threat of inadvertent or inappropriate content or contact as they are by membership only. Kevin P. Brady (2010) alerts school adminstrators to the use of both Elgg and Ning which "have been developed specifically for the education community while simultaneously addressing safety concerns voiced by school leaders." The possibility of a good social network exists, but within the guidelines of the administrator of the Ning. There are many different Nings available and I have recently become a member of one focused on our school district as well as one that focuses on history and social studies. Each of these contributes to my professional life through collaboration with other educators in the same field as me.

An important aspect of social networking sites was the divide apparent between educators (specifically adminstrators) and the views of parents and students. According to Brady (2010) "more than half of the education leaders wanted to prohibit the use of social networking sites in their schools, a majority of the parents and students expressed high expectations about the positive role social networking technologies could play in students' lives." As a professional educator I can see that this divide needs to be closed as the some of the effects on students  "include Internet learning, tutoring, time management, career exploration, peer support, stress, cheating, frustration, boredom, student responsibilities, dress code, and cyberbullying." (Strom et al 2010)

If students are "puzzled by the fact that teachers seldom employ the Internet to motivate them or to improve their capability for self-direction" as described by Strom then we as educators need to address the use of social networking in schools and as Brady suggests lift the limits that have been set on these sites in education to more fully engage our students in the digital (arguably their) world!

Aside from the student needs there are also institutional needs. According to Meredith Farkas institutions  need to create terms of use agreements for their employees to ensure that they are not being misrepresented on social networking sites as she sees the "blurring online of the divisions between professional and personal can impact organizations." (Farkas 2009) Farkas goes on to suggest that "you may also want to think about how your library represents itself online. The best way to promote and protect your brand is to have a strong presence and consistent message in the spaces your patrons frequent."

So engaging students as well as protecting both students and the reputation of your instiitution become professional concerns that need to be addressed when contemplating social networking sites. And remember when Facebook gets too scary...the Ning is the thing!


References

Brady, K.. (2010, February). Lifting the Limits on Social Networking Sites. School Administrator, 67(2), 8. Retrieved March 20, 2010, from ProQuest Education Journals. (Document ID: 1950191201).

Davies, J., & Merchant G. (2009). Web 2.0 for Schools: Learning and Social Participation. New York: Peter Lang.

Farkas, M.. (2009, December). Governing Social Media. American Libraries, 40(12), 35. Retrieved March 20, 2010, from ProQuest Education Journals. (Document ID: 1919602251).

Richardson, W. (2009). Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and other PowerfulWeb Tools for Classrooms. Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin Press.

Strom, P., Strom, R., Wing, C., & Beckert, T.. (2010, February). Adolescent Learning and the Internet. The Education Digest, 75(6), 10-16. Retrieved March 19, 2010, from ProQuest Education Journals. (Document ID: 1938473731).

MultiMedia Sharing Sites: EVERYONE can get into it!

French conversation group Paris
Originally uploaded to Flickr by LetThemTalk

Is this image a thing of the past? People actually talking and learning about something without technology seems at once refreshing and old school after spending this week using Animoto and Voicethread.

This image is in stark contrast to the Voicethread "classroom of the future?" discussion found here. 

Reflections on the Process of Learning about the Tool

This week I examined two new tools that I had never used before and that I feel may be able to create classrooms without walls as visioned in the introductory voicethread.  I had seen Voicethread used once before in one of our earlier courses but had never even heard of Animoto prior to exploring multimedia sharing sites.

I began with Voicethread and created the usual account that was free and only took a couple of minutes to register for. This part of the process has become quite automatic and is the same pretty much for all of the sites I have explored to date.  Once registered I was encouraged to start my first voicethread. I uploaded and made comments on two pictures. I typed the comments and then recorded further comments on
using a microphone. Setting up a Voicethread was very quick and easy.

I have had two class members add to my Voicethread which is kind of cool! It does give a sense  of community. But for me the best part about learning about Voicethread however is seeing how others are using it. One example is this cool game that plays audio clips from movies and asks people to guess which movies the clips are from. I also liked how people are using it as a presentation tool as in this example where "Monster Cards" are presented and commented on... more on the uses in the next two sections now I need to look at Animoto.

Animoto was a very easily setup account and a really great interface to create a good quality video very quickly. Having said that the free version is quite limiting as the final product is only thirty seconds long. Of course it is interesting to note that televison commercials are packed with information and images and they are the same thirty seconds long. There were three easy steps to create the video.

In the first step I was able to add images and video to the mash-up (they say it is an MTV style video) It took only a few minutes to add sixteen large pictures...had I resampled the pictures (used fewer pixels)  I am certain I could have reduced that time by nearly half. The pictures appear on an array and at this point you are able to move them around.

I next clicked on Step 2 and I chose one of their songs to use as my background music. They had a great selection of genres of music each with many selections to choose from. I f this wasn't your bag you ar were also allowed to upload your own files for music. At his point it is clearly stated that the user must have the rights to use the uploaded file...I suspect that many would upload popular songs that they wouldn't have the rights to and I am not sure this would be actively pursued for enforcement especially if the site is popular. Davies and Merchant (2009) devote some space to their chapter six discussing copyright issues using Napster and the court challenges that it has faced as examples and I think that there is the potential for this type of lawsuit for these mash-up sites as the music is being used perhaps illegally. One way around this was the excellent selection of songs offered right on the site which have been cleared for copyright infringement. This is a good deal for the artists too as they get exposure to a larger audience by letting the site use their music. There were links to the artists' websites as well as a link to buy the track. A real win-win relationship much as described by Cory Doctorow on his website when he discusses his reasoning for releasing his book "Little Brother" for free in many electronic forms.

With the music out of the way it was time to create the video. The third step was called finalize and it rendered the video into a usable form after analyzing the pictures and music choices. The final screen before rendering offered a chance to make a title for the video as well as a description and the name of the producer of the video. After creating the video I found a number of ways to save and share the video. I chose to embed the video and it appears here:
Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

While exploring Animoto I really had the feeling that they are all about selling then upgrades to unlimited video length (remember the free version limits you to 30 seconds) and other "premium" features. This is fine because the potential of the free version is great for school use. Another feature that I want to mention is the link to their pitch for musicians and artists. There is a page dedicated to recruiting these groups by offering to give free exposure to the artists in return of free use of their original work. I think this is a win-win situation!

The Tool in Terms of My Own Personal Learning

I am not sure that I will use these programs so much for learning, but I woulds definitely use them for sharing pictures with family. In this way it overlaps with Flickr, but I like the interface of these tools and to create an occasional video as a different way to share pictures would be refreshing!. As a parent I would encourage my children to present their ideas on these sites, warning them of the potentiel risks outlined in Davies and Merchant (2009) page 78 including exposure to inappropriate contact and breach of copywrite. The Voicethread can also be used much like a wiki. In fact I sort of see it like a wiki with the authors shown in chronological order adding to the conversation.

The Tool in Terms of Teaching and Learning

Any topic that requires discussion could be the subject of a voice thread. Students could share their work as an image or as a video and others could comment on it. Peer reviewing could be done with the whole class instead of just "exchanging papers" The linked examples earlier in this post are examples of a few of the unlimited uses for these tools. Whether the sites are used for sharing learning about |Canadian History (I want to do a Prime Minister video) or sharing a story these sites are a unique way for studetns to express themselves and become part of a meaningful conversation in an asyncronous way at their own convienience.  I can recall having students share work and when one student had to wait for another to share with... here everyonne can be a creator and a critic and these tools are truly social as they let everyone get involved!

Why the Wiki? Collaboration is Key!

Organizing group work through email can be incredibly difficult...the trail of mail really leads nowhere and there is little coordination of the information to organize it and make it valuable to the members of the group. I know this sounds a little bit like a summary of the Creative Commons video entitled Wikis in Plain English, however it is also my experience in a project that I worked on with one of our University colleagues, Geoff Orme.

Geoff and I became partners for a project and began by emailing and later telephoning (can we remember that technology Web 2.0 ers?) each other to set up our project  and to figure out what each of us would contribute to the project. During one of our conversations Geoff suggested that we use a wiki. I said sure not really knowing what a wiki was but after he gave me the quick notes version of how we could use it we were on our way. And true to form for the Creative Commons video it really was as simple as "edit, write and save." We completed and presented our entire project using the wiki.

I didn't fully understand the potential of the wiki then, but did realize that it was a great tool. For this course I have expanded my knowledge of the wiki but still feel I have a far way to go to exploit the vast potential of this interactive and collaborative Web 2.0 tool.

Reflection on the Process of Learning about the Tool

To reacquaint myself with wikis I viewed many wikis through the trailfire for this week but more on that later. Both Richardson (2009) and Davies & Merchant (2009) spent a great deal of time using wikipedia as a model for all wikis. It is highly successful and demonstrates all of what a wiki can become once we lose the fear of vandalism, and let go of the authority for information as Davie & Merchant point out with the encyclopaedia example at the beginning of their writing on wikis. Using what I had read in these two articles as a starting point I went to Wikipedia to look up Union Bay which is the small town which I call home on Vancouver Island. There is an article for Union Bay and I compared the information that was there to a history of Union Bay book that I own and it was amazingly accurate. One of the knocks against Wikipedia has been that because it can be edited by anyone that it may not be accurate. In fact Davies and Merchant have titled their chapter on wikis "Wikis:The Death of the Author?" I think that may be correct on the level that there may no longer be one author for an article, but perhaps many who will write, edit and collaborate thanks to the medium of wikis. So really wikis can be considered the birth of many authors!

Another point I found repeated in the various readings I did on wikis was that of citizen journalism which brings about the discussion of the speed and ease of creating new information using wikis. The term wiki reportedly comes from the Hawaiin term wiki-wiki which means quickly (Hawaii 5-0 enthusiasts will remember Chin-ho saying this often!) mixed with the word encyclopedia giving us a quick encylopedia. Davies and Merchant use the example of the London bombings to illustrate just how quickly information can be put on to Wikipedia through mobile devices such as cell phones. The first article appeared less than 2 hours after the attack and there have been over three thousand revisions since that time. Both numbers are impressive, the speed deomstrates the immediacy of this medium and the number of revisions demonstates what multiple authors can contribute.

As part of learning about wikis I created a wiki and posted its address to our class discussion for anyone who wanted to look at and contribute to it...at the time of this writing Tom took me up on the offer and wrote comments on the wiki. In cretaing the wiki I just registered with zoho.com for a free wiki site and then editted the wiki. It was a simple process. As with many web 2.0 sites I was encouraged to add tags to my wiki which I did. On the right side column of the wiki it at first said that I had no tags and that I should add them to make my wiki more easily found, however it took me a while to figure out thta the + sign near the edit button was where the tags were to be added. Other parts of the swetup were much easier. I used the templates that they supplied and found them very easy to use. I added a second page to further work with the wiki and this worked well including automatically linking it as a subpage to the home page. Having built websites using HTML I find the easse of wikis a thing of beauty, although I do feel a loss of control as things such as page layout and fonts are preset for me. I feel confident in the basics of wikis and feel that I can use them both personally and professionally in the future.

The Tool and My Own Personal Learning

The main use I see for my personal learning is collaboration. When a project requires collaboration I will immediately suggest a wiki instead of using email to coordinate tasks on a project and contributions by the various members of a group. I think that wikis can replace emails for these types of projects because not only can I share information about the project, but I can also create the project using wiki software. Wikis simplify the process by posting the information once for the whole group to see compared to emails which need to be opened and refered back to often multiple times to share the same information with colleagues.

The Tool and Teaching and Learning

There is limitless potential for wikis to be used in educational settings. In all area of the curriculum wikis have a place. I currently have a homework page for math, but I am considering creating a wiki to link lessons, review, homework and real life applications of mathematics together. This could alos be a place where students are able to support one another in their learning by asking and answering questions reagrding their work.
I have created a Flickr page for my yearbook and we treat it somewhat as a wiki to share the photographs and fundamentally it is based on the wiki premise that everyone is the editor in chief and evreyone can make a contribution. I will look further into creatinga wiki for the yearbook as well as the Flickr page.

One of the keypoints that I got from Vicki Davis in her Cool Cat Teacher Wiki was to begin slowly and build the wikis carefully. I feel that this week has sparked the interest in wikis and that I need to look at the goals for my students and how to achieve them using wikis...

PODcasting ---an audio journey!

This is my test "podcast"

I put the link to my test podcast first because it was the result of more work than I would have thought necessary! Here is my story...or

Reflections on the process of learning about the tool

Podcasting or making audio files available for Playing On Demand is actually quite simple. My process this week reminded me however, of my Grade 9 Math class because as we study the introductory algebra I keep telling them that the steps are simple, but the number of steps makes it more complex. In my process of learning this week the number of new (never before completed) steps made the task that much more complex.

The first step was to create a recording to be played by others on demand...that was the easy part for me this week as I've already done this as part of a prior assignment. I used Audacity which I like more every time I have a chance to use it. I created five tracks on Audacity and then exported them as an mp3 file which automatically mixed it into a stereo file with a left and right channel.

Now that I had my file I had no clue how to make it become part of my blog...in the previous assignment I just uploaded the files to the discussion of our class website... so I went to the help section in Blogger and looked up instructions on how to add a podcast to my blog.   

The help was very helpful...it gave me the choice to link to third party files or to create my own (podcasting) I chose the latter option  and followed the instructions with I hope some degree of success... but of course there was another set of steps needed to rookies such as myself...that was setting up an account so that my files could be "hosted" or uploaded to a site that my blog could then link to...enter Box.net

Then next step I needed to take was to open an account with a hosting site. The help section in blogger suggested box.net and I tried it. It was relativly easy to start a free account which allows me to store up to 1 gigabyte of files to share otr link to.

Finally I made the link at the start of this post which unlocks my "test" podcast. 

Each of these steps is rather simple, but much like the algebra my grade 9 students are learning as I add more steps the whole process becomes more complex and time-consuming! It is the time that it takes for each step and the learning of the technologies that  I find difficult, not the actual learning. I complete learning how to use the tool at a minimal level which is frustrating because \i can see the use of these tools and would like to explore them in greater depth, but alas that will have to wait until the course ends and I find more time for it...this leads me to...

My Own Personal Learning

The main use of podcasting in my personal life has been through the master's program at the U. of Alberta. In our last course together Joanne had introductory podcasts for topics throughout the course. My colleagues pointed out the convenience of these as they could travel in their cars or do such tasks as gardening while learning about various facets of the course through podcasts. As a non-ownwer of an mp3 player of any kind I was jealous of the freedon that the podcasts were giving to my fellow students as I was chained to my computer. This leads me to believe that while I do not own a portable means of accessing the files Podcasting probably isn't for me... having said that I do like learning how to use audacity, however, the "Sound Recorder" that comes with windows could also make decent enough audio files.... this covers the fact that I likely will not be creating a number of podcasts in the near future, however, I have visited sites such as the Willowdale school site and see enormous potential for podcasting for my students which leads me to...

Teaching and Learning

Podcasting has enormous potential as a medium for students to share information within the class and outside of the class. In order to create good podcasts students will have to research the topics that they are discussing and with guided learning practices the sky is the limit on the curricular areas that can be covered in podcasting. I just finished listening to the Willowdale Elementary school podcast about the Olympic Games and it was very well done...I can see the social opportunities as a group of students plans, reserarches and records the podcast. They added music clips to segue from each topic and this is another area a student would have to gain some expertise in to create a good quality podcast. Will Richardson (2009) talks about the ease of creating a podcast and the fact that Willowdale includes students as early as Grade 1 indicates the ease of which he speaks. richardson also writes about the risk of putting children from schools on the web but the Willowdale example tackles this by only identifying first names of students in their radio shows.

The big con I see with podcasting is that it is only a "half medium" meaning that we are so used to having both audio and visual that I see audio only as a weakness...videocasting is where i see the future of web applications... Richardson points out that podcasting can be used for interviews, but in videocasting we can see the interview...allowing us to interpret body language of the speakers as well as voice cues... I grew up listening to radio and enjoyed the Network Replays of such shows as "The Shadow Knows" but still see video as a better option for today's students... I am fortunate enough to have a set of digital camcorders available for my students to whom I teach media... this is perhaps why I am partial to video... I must concede that not every school has this luxury and Richardson (2009 p. 113) points out that it is very inexpensive to run a radio station with a web connection and very little equipment... this is the main advantage I can see for the audio podcasts...I personally and professionally prefer videocasts.