In Print/Web: “Internet Audio: Can You Hear/Talk to Me Now? Good.”

Our Spring 2005 issue of the mcli Forum is printed on its way to all faculty and staff at Maricopa. We always put on the fast burn to create the web version in time to be announced before the paper hits the mailboxes.

It’s a tedious formatting chore, but it is actually one of my favorite designs as it fairly well varies the print design in mostly CSS.

The big news is finally being able to share the not really groundbreaking article on digital audio / podcasting, “Internet Audio: Can You Hear/Talk to Me Now? Good.”:

In this article, you will find an overview of tools available now for two-way audio conversations via the internet as well as the audio publishing phenomena known as “podcasting.” To better understand how people are using these technologies and where they think the fit is for teaching and learning, I conducted mini digital audio interviews with more than 20 people, within Maricopa and quite far outside, asking people to share what digital audio devices they owned, what content they listen to, and what ideas they had for using digital audio in education. You can find the entire collection at http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/forum/spr05/podcast.html.

The article itself is not more than what has been written more cohrently and definitely elsewhere (see the side bar resources); the real “stuff” is in the collection of 22 mini interviews I did using every device I could find- MP3 recorder, Wimba, Skype, iChat, recorder in front of the phone.. and not even in the tools but the ideas that people shared when I put them on the spot.

My hats off to one of my favorite colleagues, Physics teacher and technology heat seeker extraordinaire, David Weaver (Chandler-Gilbert Community College), who heard a mention of podcasting, and went out on his own to record his own MP3 I could merely download. I had set these up so I edited my voice out completely. But David not only set up the DJ like musical intro and background, he conjured up Brad Pitt’s barely understandable accent from Snatch to represent my “voice” asking the questions. I did not have the heart or reason to edit that out.

All 22 interviews are set up as a podcast Feed (though there is no use in susbcribing as I plan not to add ti it) and even uses Feed2JS to display the content on the page listing.

But there is a lot more worth reading as well in our other set of articles, linked form the cover.