Item 21 Podcasts and Audio Books

This is the topic that really got me interested in completing the 23 things. I wanted to learn how to make something that resembled some of the really cool online booktalks that I had seen other librarians post. One blog by a California librarian who was completing the 23 things, Hammock Reader, really caught my eye - http://hammockreader.blogspot.com/2007/12/this-is-my-voicethread-booktalks-that.html . Her VoiceThread booktalk that she created for her students' summer reading really impressed me. I wanted to learn how to make something like that for the children at my school.

I still want to learn how to do that, but I think I'm much closer to achieving that goal now that I've completed so much of this training course. The Region IV workshop on podcasting that I took in June this summer was very helpful in giving me the confidence to try PhotoStory 3 and Audacity. Having someone there to help when you got stuck, and actually completing a story and a podcast made that workshop one of the best technology workshops I've taken. Shortly after attending that workshop, I made a simple photostory showing students working in our schoolyard habitat. I did manage to upload that project below this entry.

We are building a new tool shed in our backyard this summer to replace the old one that fell to pieces. I made a Photostory about that - it's got over 65 photographs and lasts over 5 minutes. I need to pare it down. I plan to give it to our friend who did the construction job as a memento of all his hard work in the oh-so-hot Texas sun. I used video from my Flip, digital photos from a camera, and music I downloaded at one of those free music sites. That's a pretty good start for an amateur who doesn't excel in technology.

I must admit that I don't find podcasts as interesting as vodcasts. I really think you need an image (if not a moving story) to help maintain the interest and attention of your audience. I would like to get competent enough to create online booktalks for some of the books in our library. I am going to try and include a link to another librarian who makes elaborate booktalk videos (I don't aspire to anything that complex). http://naomibates.blogspot.com/2008/07/how-i-create-digital-booktrailers.html I do have a link to her school library on this blog site - the Northwest High School link. If you visit her library site, you can watch/listen to the booktalks and podcasts. I can't imagine where you find the time to create that type of website/reports. Still, perhaps a group of librarians could get together and share the booktalks they created. If you got 5 librarians together, and each librarian created 6 booktalks - when you pooled your resources each librarian would have 30 booktalks to add to their library website. That would be cool.
I'm still having trouble figuring out how to put a link in this blog entry so that readers can view other websites. It's so annoying. I think I'm doing everything that's needed to add a link, but clearly I'm not. Then at times, I'll have a link appear in my blog, and I'm not sure what it was that I did to achieve it. Here is the address for the Region IV wiki made as an aid for the class I took in June: http://region4podcasting.pbwiki.com/ . I have it as an active link two or three entries earlier in this blog.

I made the How to Steal a Dog and the Lawn Boy vodcasts at that workshop. This next address goes to a You Tube video about copyright law and the Walt Disney company. It's pretty funny, you might have already seen it - librarians should get a chuckle. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUPsfYJONrU" I tried uploading my tool shed video, but I got an error message - just as well. It's a long video that needs some more editing.