Encountering E-Learning Education

my-greatest-passion-script.docmy-greatest-passion-script.docemmaskiing.mp3

This was a class activity on the second day of our e-learning summer subject. We used Garagebandto create our own podcast and then exported it as an MP3 to upload to our edublog. The topics we were given to create the podcast were “My greatest passion” or “My wildest dream”. I selected “My greatest passion” and chose to write about skiing. A key factor in selecting this topic was the way I felt I could describe the topic in an engaging and interesting way using lots of descriptions of the snow. I endeavoured to use the podcast to create vivid images and pictures of the snow in my listeners mind, through use of sound. Matthew informed us that Garageband was designed for Mac computers but that we could download Audacityfor free from the internet and this software is compatible with PC computers. This was particularly useful to know as it would allow me to use casting in the classroom in future teaching days.

I found Garageband quite user-friendly as well as being very fun and interesting to play around with. The ducking tool was particularly useful, however I ended up overriding it in order to have greater control over the sound. I wanted the orchestral music behind my speech to rise and fall depending on the mood, which required manipulating the sound manually. There were many features I wish to further explore for my LAMs learning sequence such as changing the voice tone and using further sound affects. I did insert a picture of a snowflake into my podcast which would appear as an iTunes file. However, because I exported as a MP3 so I could use it in my edublog it was lost. We also learnt how to use bluetooth to send the file to our mobile phones. We discussed how this is a particularly powerful tool as it creates a vast audience for students to share their work with in a teaching context. It would give students great ownership and deep sharability to have their own podcast on their mobile phone or iPod to share with their friends and family.