Fear - by Mark Sun on Flickr (CC)

As part of our MSc we’ve had to read a paper by Guy Merchant (2009) on Web2.0, new literacies and the idea of learning though participation. We were asked to provide a response on it in a form of our choosing. I thought I’d have a go with Audioboo as I haven’t really had a chance to play with it.

You can read the paper here. It’s well worth it if you are interested in web2.0 and social networking for eductaion.

My response was just a quick thing about the relationship between participation and engagement on one hand and fear on the other and how it links to reading I did as an undergrad about fear (informed or otherwise) influences behaviour in real landscapes. The book was by Yi Fu Tuan and can be found here.

I don’t draw any radical conclusions as this was more a way of recording some thoughts.

PS – Sorry about the tag cloud – slight issues following updating the plugin…

Myna from Aviary

Aviary has recently released a web based audio editor called Myna and it’s well wrth a look regardless of what area of the curriculum you’re from.

Aviary already has an established web presence with its fantastic suite of image and graphics tools (all named after birds – go see!) and this is a welcome diversion from them. It’s getting to the stage where they are seriously challenging the likes of Adobe’s Photoshop Elements and Illustrator for the education market.

Anyway; Myna…

Picture a halfway house between Audacity and Garageband, add in that it’s a web tool and so comes with easy options for sharing and embedding and you have Myna. Here’s the demo video…

The interface is intuitive if you have used loop-based audio editors before and is reasonably straightforward for neophytes as well. It certainly looks more engaging than Audacity which, athough a thoroughly excellent tool, isn’t the friendliest-looking thing.

The Garageband-like functions are interesting. You can create pieces of music quickly and easily without much musical know-how using intro’s, loops and endings. The production values on the original clips are high so the results are highly listenable.

You don’t have as much flexibility to mix instruments as Garageband. Essentially, they’ve chopped up ready-made pieces of music and you just reassemble the chunks in the order you want. For most uses that’s as much flexibility as you need.

I did have problems trying to record audio using a mic because I couldn’t get the server to respond when I tried it. It may be to do with being behind a proxy server at work. I used the feedback tool in Myna to flag it up but haven’t received a reply yet. I’ll update the post when I know more.

At the other end, saving and publishing work is a breeze. You save your work as you go then select Mixdown when you’re ready. It gives you an option to save the MP3 or copy the URL and embed code of the finished audio. A lot more painless than getting a class to export an MP3 using Audacity with it’s Lame encoder complications.

The possibilities are huge with this. It’s easy for a class to create podcasts in the classroom or at home, flex their creative muscles and then share what they’ve done. If you have class blog or use a VLE then htis could make homework very interesting indeed.

There’s no cost to set up an Aviary account but a pro subscription is available for $25 a year and there’s education pricing too which isn’t clarified on the website.

See Danny Nicholson’s earlier blog post for another review…

Image - Eddie Lawrance on Flickr

No  matter where you go on the internet, whatever you discover it is a safe bet that Stephen Fry has got there before you!

So it is with AudioBoo. Basically, it’s Twitter for audio.

I’ll start with the bad news, unless you have an iPhone you can’t upload stuff to it. It’s an iPhone app which allows you to record audio (max 5mins) using the in-built mic, tag it and publish it almost instantly along with a photo and your GPS location.

Without an iPhone you can still sign up and follow other people’s Boo’s but that limits the educational possibilities quite substantially. Much better if you can publish or have a “boo-versation” (I made that up, can you tell?).

As far as what to use it for, it extends podcasting by making collaboration, reflection and commenting a lot more immediate. The ability to geotag is really appealing, especially for fieldwork (for some reason, seeing where Stephen Fry had been when he recorded his Boos was eerie in the extreme).

What other iPhone apps have you come across that have great educational potential?

I’ve talked about using VLE’s to list suggested links for students rather than free-Googling. Here they suggest using MS Publisher to create an HTML page and including writing frames in the document to help them structure their responses – a great idea as just expecting the students to write what they find isn’t effective.

Check out the resources page for instructions and lists of software.

The 2nd part is about podcasting to help with revision and is also worth your time.

I’m going to have a play with the Podomatic podcasting software featured and post an evaluation for you before Christmas.

(Note: The spelling on the link in the resources document is wrong – my link should work fine)

Go to the iTunes U website to find out more.

The content is obviously higher ed but it might be useful for A’Level teaching resources and giving school students a glimpse of what learning at university might be like (I guess one of the motivations for  putting the stuff up there).

I particularly like the Naked Scientist podcasts from Cambridge uni. Really smoothly produced but also fun and entertaining. Check their website.

Also, if you are interested in embedding technology into teaching and learning then Edutopia, the George Lucas Educational Foundation has an interesting series called Technology Integration on there. Better than the Phantom Menace at any rate!