Let’s say you have an audio file but you only want a piece of it, not the whole thing. How do you remove just a few seconds of audio from a larger file? Online MP3 Cutter does exactly that, and does it well.
Online MP3 Cutter allows you to quickly and easily take an MP3 file and cut a section out of it. The entire process takes about 10 seconds, and best of all, you don’t lose an iota of sound quality in the process.
If you can spare five minutes, you can learn all about technology and the classroom. This is the idea behind Mark Barnes’ Learn It In 5 website, and I have to say the site does what it says. I watched a short video tutorial about using Twitter in the classroom (others focus on using YouTube, podcasting, wikis and more) and found it to be useful, simple in its explanation. and a perfect entry point for curious teachers.
Now approaching its 200th show, the weekly Teachers Teaching Teachers webcast (and later podcast) is a wealth of interesting discussions and resources for teachers trying to navigate ways to use technology in the classroom. Hosts Paul Allison and Susan Ettenheim invite guests each week to talk about an issue, or a technology tool, and then skillfully guide the discussions around teacher stories and reflections on the issue.
When I first saw GirlTalk Radio I was unsure what to expect — with a name like that I was thinking I might get a podcast discussing whether or not I had a case of Justin Bieber Fever (which, for the record, I don’t). But it turns out it’s anything but. GirlTalk Radio is an inspiring program that takes middle-school-aged girls and lets them interview women who are the movers and shakers in various fields of science.
If you have a microphone, even a cheap one, and access to the Internet, then you can create a simple podcast. Vocaroo is one such site designed for simplicity. You plug in a microphone, click the green button, and record your voice. Within seconds, you’re listening back. If you stumble over your words it’s easy enough to try a second or third take. Just click the “Record Again” button and the old file is gone, replaced by the newer one.
Lately, during my lunch break, I usually sit at my desk and drop crumbs of food into my keyboard. That’s a terribly boring way to pass your lunch hour. So, naturally, I started watching my favorite show, The Golden Girls, on a streaming TV site. The main problem now is that most sites don’t have full episodes, just the excerpts. So I dug deeper. One site that streams shows is based somewhere in Asia. There are all sorts of foreign characters bannered across the top of the screen and the subtitles can sometimes take up one-third of the screen. How cool would it be if I managed to learn to read Chinese from passively exposing myself to the subtitles on my streaming episodes of The Golden Girls during my lunch break?!
BY BILL FERRIS
This week’s MBTN features an express flight to Mars, Web 2.0 project ideas, alternatives to book reports, and online sites where you can learn a new language. Read about all of it after the jump.
In the comments for Bill’s posting about the Stuff You Missed in History Class Podcast, I mentioned that people who enjoyed that show might also enjoy Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History. It’s a little dry and demands some attentive listening, but can be pretty rewarding if you find that you enjoy it.
Dan Carlin brings a really unusual perspective to looking at history. In one of his more sensational episodes, “History Under the Influence,” he explores how drugs and alcohol might have played a role in history. For example, have you ever considered the possibility that certain historical figures were tweaking on amphetamines or strung out on painkillers? How about asking who was drunk and possibly bi-polar? It definitely sounds irreverent, but remember that history is often written by the winners.
BY BILL FERRIS
Students have gotten used to doing things electronically. Your classroom doesn’t have to be an exception thanks to LectureTools, a learning management thingy from the University of Michigan.
Developers designed LectureTools with huge, impersonal college lecture courses in mind. However, there’s a lot here that K-12 teachers can use, too (though some of them would probably be best suited for 1:1 laptop environments). (more…)
It’s time again for our random roundup. This month’s theme: NASA, pioneers of space and subjects of an awful lot of posts.
Do-it-yourself is in, even with podcasting at NASA!
It seems that every time you turn around these days someone’s encouraging you to complete a DIY project. Why pay for someone else to do it when you can do it yourself? Apparently, NASA has the same attitude on its website on Do-It-Yourself Podcasts.
Set the controls for the closest planet to the sun: NASA Mission to Mercury
This site includes up-to-the-minute clocks that record the elapsed time of the mission as well as the Orbit Insertion time. Watch the actual August 3, 2004 launch of Messenger from mission control. You can take your class through a tour of images already taken by Messenger as it zooms toward Mercury.
Blast Off with the NASA Kids’ Club
NASA Kids’ Club is a great way to learn more about space exploration. It’s got great pictures, games and activities that will pique the interest of space-minded kids. As a no-cost way to learn about the space program, the NASA Kids’ Club is the Right Stuff.
Observe NASA’s Earth Observatory
What if we were able to turn our telescopes around and get a closer look at what is happening right below our feet? The folks at NASA have done just that with their Earth Observatory site. Teachers, head right for the Experiments tab and give your students interactive ways to study global warming and plant biomes around the world. If you love reading blogs (and I know you do!), check out the Expedition to Siberia blog that offers almost daily updates and pictures of this fascinating trip.
Cool satellite image from the inauguration
Check out this great picture from the presidential inauguration. As the GeoEye-1 satellite hurtled through the cosmos, it took this snapshot to commemorate the historic occasion. That’s a lot of people! Not only that, I now know the roof of the Capitol is tarheel blue.
Observe Mars in 3D
Still have some of those promotional 3D glasses kicking around from after the Superbowl? Fire up one of NASA’s 3D image galleries to take your students on a tour of Mars.
It seems that every time you turn around these days someone’s encouraging you to complete a DIY project. Why pay for someone else to do it when you can do it yourself? Apparently, NASA has the same attitude on its website on Do-It-Yourself Podcasts.
Essentially, this website is a hub for high-quality, NASA-created video clips, audio files, and still images that you or your students can download to mash up with your own files to create a finished podcast (or vodcast). The topics NASA offers for download are not all-inclusive; currently you can download media about lab safety, Newton’s Laws, sport science, and spacesuits. Once downloaded, you can use various editing software programs (such as Animoto, which we blog about here, or the video editing software already on your computer such as Windows Movie Maker) to create your podcast. Once the podcast is complete, NASA gives you permission to publish it in any way you want. It could be a neat showcase of student work on a class or school website.
If you’re a teacher and you think this is a great idea but don’t really know where to start, the website also offers a DIY Podcasting Blog. The blog has some pre-posted ideas about how to use the website to make podcasts and videos in your classroom and it encourages teachers to share how they’ve used the site in their own classrooms via comments (also, here is a post we did on producing videos in the classroom). Overall, NASA seems to offer a great way to get started with podcasting using some very high-quality multimedia resources. So get your students out there DIY-ing some podcasts and vodcasts. -REBECCAH HAINES
Learn science facts in small chunks: Bytesize Science
Reading is an essential skill that every kid should get excited about. Unfortunately, reading is often seen as a chore and busy work by students everywhere. If only we could find a way to harness tools on the web to get kids excited about reading. If only. BookWink is ahead of the curve, fortunately. BookWink is a site that uses podcasts and videos to present reading materials for students in 3rd to 8th grade. Search for books based on subject, grade level, title or author, where you can read reviews of hundreds of books.
You can subscribe to the video or audio podcasts, and for those of you who are new to podcasting, there is a handy and explanatory guide to setting up your iTunes so you can listen to and view all the info you can hope for. If you just want to check out some of the videos without subscribing, you can also look through the archives of previous subjects. The videos feel like a modern day Reading Rainbow, as books are reviewed and explained in groups of various themes such as popularity, Sea Adventures, and Museum Mysteries. Not only does BookWink harness the availability of internet video and audio applications, it’s a great way for students and teachers alike to discover new books that might not fall into the required summer reading lists. -JEREMY S. GRIFFIN
Book choices for early adolescents: the good, the bad, and the ugly
In my own geeky world of talk radio programs, This American Life adds a little bit more of a storytelling element than most programming on National Public Radio. To me, anyway, the TAL team’s stories can arguably be considered more accessible than NPR. Now it time for me to sit back and let my inbox fill up with a whole bunch of hate. But I will concede this: NPR’s Planet Money podcast has been on fire lately.
So when Planet Money’s Alex Blumberg and Adam Davidson made this episode for This American Life, it was the best of both worlds. They do an excellent of job explaining the breakdown in banking that has occurred and the problems that banks currently face. The acting sounds a bit hammy sometimes, but I think its also hammy on purpose, as though they’re subtly being a bit derisive towards the bad borrowers and lenders.
The Bad Bank episode is a good starting point for students who have questions about what started this whole recession mess. The best part is that Blumberg and Davidson make it understandable for people like me, who — while incredibly smart — still have difficulty getting past the language barrier of business and finance. -NICK YINGLING
Instructifeature: Four views of the recession…and none of them look that great
Marketplace explains the credit crisis as an Antarctic expedition
Want to know what strikes fear in the hearts of many a student? No, it isn’t the mystery meat in the cafeteria. In fact, it is the verbal section of any standardized test. I mean, how often do high schoolers use the word pertinacious in everyday conversation? Luckily for your students, VerbaLearn is here to make learning that vocabulary list much less tedious.
Once you create a free account, you can build a vocabulary list for the SAT, ACT, GRE, or General Vocabulary. Like any good teacher, VerbaLearn begins with a pre-assessment of your knowledge. It gives you an online quiz in which you either select the best definition, or the best synonym for a given word. It also allows you to specify whether your answer was “just a guess,” or if you’re “pretty sure.” If it was “just a guess,” it automatically goes on your study list. If you were “pretty sure,” you’ll see the word again in the quiz to give a synonym or definition, whichever you didn’t do the first time you saw the word. If you get it right the second time, you won’t see the word again. If you get it wrong, off it goes to your study list.
Once your study list is full, there are several options for study and review. You can continue to review online via fill-in-the-blank sentences, or you can review offline by subscribing to your personal vocabulary list podcast. You get an audio version downloaded to your favorite podcast aggregator that says the word, the definition, and a sentence using the word. All of the aforementioned features are free, though there are several other features such as video flashcards, crossword puzzles, and printed flashcards that you can get if you subscribe to the premium version.
Hopefully, this post has piqued your interest so that you will examine VerbaLearn punctiliously. Your students’ verbal fears will be assuaged as they become verbal gourmands using this website. -REBECCAH HAINES
Expand your vocabulary with the Princeton Review Vocab Minute
Get your students ready for the SAT on the cheap
The Root of the Issue: Review word roots with this SAT word game
I wasn’t able to get back to the NCTIES conference today, but I’ve still got some material from Thursday. Tammy Worcester talked about a topic near and dear to my heart in her presentation “Cell Phones in the Classroom.”
Worcester began by asking us if we had our phones with us. In most social situations, this question is followed by “Please turn them off,” but she said we’d be using them during the presentation, so we should get them ready. I did, eager for an opportunity to show off my geektastic Android phone. (I kept hoping someone would notice it so I could bore them about how cool it is. Nobody noticed, which is probably for the best.)
Worcester first demonstrated GOOG-411, which Instructify has reviewed before but is worth bringing up again. It works like a free, automated 411 service. Ask for a business or business category, say your city and state, and Google will connect you for free. As a bonus, you can say “text” and Google will send you a text message with the business’ address and phone number. Slick, huh?
Speaking of Google, check out their SMS page for how to get lots of info by sending a text message. You can send a text message to 466453 (GOOGLE) to get weather updates, word definitions, movie showtimes, all kinds of stuff. For a full list of Google phone fun, no matter what sort of smart phone you use, head to www.google.com/mobile.
If you have email on your phone, try making blog posts via email on your Blogger account (other blog services may also have this feature, but I’m unaware — let us know if they do!). On the Dashboard, if you click on Settings and Email you can set up an email address that, if you send an email to it, will post your emails directly to the blog. You’ll probably want to keep that address a secret, but Worcester set up a demo blog and gave us the address so we could try it out. If you’ve got a camera phone, it’ll also post pictures. This would be handy for a photo assignment for students — ask them to take a picture about, say, an indigenous animal and post it to the blog with comments, for example.
Worcester also pointed out the mobile podcasting service Gabcast, which lets you make a podcast directly from your cell phone. It costs around $10 for 100 minutes of recording time, which isn’t bad but you can probably find a free service somewhere online.
Finally, Worcester covered Poll Everywhere, a service that lets you set up live polls in which students (or whoever) can vote via text message. You can embed the poll results in your blog, website or PowerPoint presentation. Poll Everywhere is free so long as you have 30 or fewer poll respondents. However, those 30 people can take as many polls as you’d like to set up. Alice Mercer covered this one back in July, but once again, a friendly reminder never hurts.
All in all, it was a very informative presentation that explored what cell phones can do for education. So even if I didn’t get to show off my geek phone, I now know a few new tricks it can do. -BILL FERRIS
For more info, check out Tammy Worcester’s website
Online handouts from her NCTIES session (which technically aren’t handouts, but are technically useful)
Ask the readers: phones in class
Top 6: Using cell phones in school
Use cell phones to poll your students
Google Local Voice Search: Dialing 411 Just Got a Little Longer
Photo credit: Milica Sekulic on Flickr.
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