In week four we have been investigating ways of webcasting using voice and video. I have finally understood a little better how Splashcast works and decided to create a show with my pictures from Goiânia. I posted it to the group and want to try the audio, video and text comments on it.

This EVO time has allowed me the opportunity to learn a little bit more about tools also. Two tools I have been playing with are Blogcheese and Qlipboard . The first one is a video blog tool and the second allows you to take screenshots, then you can record your voice over the screenshots. Later you can upload your slide show to Youtube. I did exactly that and created a tutorial for blogcheese.

 

We are in week 2 now. This is the time to use and get familiar with some of the tools we have seen in week 1 and get used to new ones. The multitasking goes and we continue chatting and chatting. The chatting fever started with the Tapped In tour on Sunday. We move on to the uses of Skype and Worlbridges. The Skype/Worldbridges session was good for what we learned about the tool and about e-learning in general. Learning, at least for me and for some webheads, has a chaotic ingredient. Learning is messy, not linear. It is informal not formal. I think in the beginning it is difficult to get used to this non-linear way of learning. Learning using web 2.0 applications requires surfing through a plethora of links and task switching. Our identities are scattered in the web through our posts in blogs, wikis, discussion forums and we start asking ourselves: “Will I be able to cope with it?” “How can I be in so many places, have so many web pages, understand and use so many applications and  tools?” I guess the answer to these questions only time will tell. For myself, I am in many places and many times at the same time. I have managed to learn about lots of tools not all of them. I just pick the ones that are most appealing to me and use them to create things that are meaningful to me and to my students. That is the way I continue learning and enjoying the learning ride.

 I was trying to get voice into wordpress and edublogs and I decided to do this recording using Audacity. Of course, I had to do some trials before getting the code from splashcast ,which is not that obvious, but learning is a lot about trial and error and there was a tutorial (God bless them).  For now, listen to some ideas I have for using audacity to integrate voice into teaching and teacher development.

Week one is almost gone and we already miss it. It was wonderful to say hello to so many people. Of course, many times we got lost and lost track of countries and had trouble spelling names. I blush thinking about my typos in the yahoo messenger and not mentioning the other kinds of mistakes (multitasking is our sin and our salvation). It does not really matter. Above all in the cyber world of webheads we make our best to be kind and helpful (actually, it is pretty easy because everyone is so kind). Many participants (through yahoo group postings, skype and yahoo private chat) expressed their willingness to learn and share, their natural insecurity facing a new way of learning and teaching, their desire to continue learning. If I had to define webheads my definition would “people who are fond of online learning and teaching.” A very personal definition, of course, but one that summarizes what we have been doing here and represents the kind of people we are.

EVO Sessions are around the corner. My first experience with this event was back in 2006. I took a session called ICT in ELT. I remember I registered to the course when I was in Sorocaba as a participant of the 2006 Hornby Summer School (this was the first edtion of this event in Brazil). Babara Dieu (Bee) on her workshop on Blogs and online learning introduced EVO to us. So, she suggested we signed up for a course and I signed up for this.

Back home when the course started, the e-mails with introductions started coming and it all began. Of course, all that was a bit overwhelming to me, and I learned what lurking was, and was what I did most of the time. Nonetheless, I learned quite and bit and discovered a new world and a new way of learning.  In 2007 I took BaW07  (Becoming a Webhead 2007) and B4B (Blogging for Beginners) and was a bit more able to take in the things people were discussing and sharing. Now I am on the third year of my learning adventure and just can´t wait for the beginning.  

I don’t know if you have heard of Jack Humphey of the Friday Traffic Report. He seems to be an expert in wordpress. You are probably familiar with him if you have watched the previous video post. I confess that I myself am having problems with wordpress plugins. I remember that Iwent though Wordpress documentation and spent hours  trying to get something done and nothing. Let’s see if this video makes things clear for me and for those reading this post and watching this video. I myself am going to try to see if I get get my plugins on with both edublogs and wordpress and keep you posted on my progress. I know it is a funny thing posting how to do things in wordpress in  edublogs. Once I called this blog Learning Process, I decided to keep posting about this learning process I am going through.

Exploring edublogs blogs I came across Ifilm which is one of the options for embedding movies to edublogs. Although this is an edublog blog, I am sure that this video on embedding youtube videos to wordpress is helpful, especially to those who followed my last posting on how to create a wordpress blog. Edublogs, although very similar to wordpres has an easier way to do it. To embed videos in edublogs you just have to click on the icon and enter the video id (generally a number) shown at the end of the link in the pop up window on the top of your screen. I hope this video adds onto my last post.

Technology in general, just like many things in life, is about trial and errors. I have been blogging for sometime. However, knowledge is a chaotic, non-linear process. I have been struggling with posting videos to my wordpress blog. After almost two weeks of receiving help from my BaW07  and B4B  friends I finally managed to post this video on how to blog. I am a big fan of wordpress and thought the placing this video on how to blog on wordpress would be a form of paying a tribute to this wonderful blog host. My preference for wordpress has a lot to do with the fact of being the one I first used as a part of my experience in the Hornby Summer in
Sorocaba in January 2006. In addition to that, I would like to share with you what I have learned about how to post a video to wordpress or edublogs . If you want to post a  youtube, daily motion or any other video, these blog hosts will ask for the video id. The video id is what comes after value, so you will have to look for the code to embed the video. You can now copy and paste the code to your editing box. Once you have done that, you have to look for the value (generally a bunch of letters like MMYi4_COZMO not immediately after the word value) this is the only thing you will have to keep plus the video site name. In your editing box you will have to leave youtube id=MMM.. enclosed by brackets [ ]. The video I posted above is a very comprehensive one.  Mr Abraham does give clear instructions on posting and managing your wordpress blog. However, posting a video seems to be the trickiest part. I hope these guidelines help you out in posting a video.

This week’s BaW07 task involved designing a web page. First I had a chat with our colleague Ibrahim and he gave me some good hints on how to start. He gave the NVU link and also sent some samples of templates of his own. He also referred me to a site to look for web templates. I went to the NVU download site and downloaded the application. I did the same with the templates, but I could not see them like I expected on my computer. The NVU is an open source and seems to work pretty well for designing. The problem I am still having is getting the templates I need and to follow the steps for designing the website. The NVU site has a Video Tutorial, but watching it I have felt like you might have felt watching the youtube video I have finally managed to embed in this post. Finally I have found a written version of the NVU application. Hopefully in two days I will be able to finish my web page.