Adding audio to a slideshow online!

Adding audio to slides is easy with Voice Thread. Here are some comments about my granddaughter, Riley.

Print vs. Audio Introductions

Classroom introductions may be informal, even in print. However, audio offers the opportunity of supportive encouragement. See the difference here between the two.

Free Camtasia tutorials

For those of you ready to add audio and video to your online class, you might like TechSmith's software Camtasia.

I found free online tutorials that give you both the big picture and specific step by step tutorials using Camtasia for screen capture, for powerpoint and for the combination of both.

Check out Mastering Camtasia.

Podcasting and Old Time Radio

As I prepare for podcasting, I am reviewing old time radio shows with new ears. What makes a good radio show? How are the transitions done? How short are the items? What sound effects do they use?

Now I've found a wealth of material at Old Time Radio. 12,000 shows! From Fibbie McGee and Molly to Our Miss Brooks and Red Skelton. These require Real Player and will play in the background, while you do other things! That's 18,000 hours of listening at 30 minutes a show!!

Study questions for Pharmacy

Here is a widget that gives a new practice question every day for those studying to get into a pharmacy college. Might also be good practice for nursing students, as well.

Widgets or Digital Bling?

I have just discovered that I can add widgets to my blogs.

Here is a fun, mindless game guaranteed to support procrastination! It's called Flood It Game.

The object of the game is to flood the whole board with one color in less than 25 steps. You start from the top left corner and progress by selecting one of the colorred balls on the left. When you change y our current area color, every adjacent square with the same color also changes, that way you can flood other aras on the board.

While you are playing, I will look for more educational widgets.

I've added the "Study Bunny" to represent http://www.howtostudy.org

Click on more and feed him his carrot. Don't we all need to eat our carrots?

Free photo album storage

If you want to have a place to store your photo albums online, so that the pictures can be easily placed into your blogs. Check out allyoucanupload.com

Then you will be able to add photos like this.

Long Podcasts

I recently subscribed via iTunes to A Way with Words, a podcast of a weekly radio show by Richard Lederer of Anguish English (bloopers) and Martha Barnette of Dog Days and Dandelions. I had a file cleaning job to do and used the podcast to engage the mind on a mindless task.

However, how many of us have 50 minutes to dedicate to a single podcast? Even though I'm retired, I don't often have this time. So what I liked about the podcast was the companion site,

that had an informal table of contents for the print version of some of the segments as well as addition material.

It seems to me that if I were making podcasts for students, I might like to have a similar setup for reference and future resources. Then, if they didn't listen to the whole lecture, at least they could get some of the info in print.

However, I am resolving never to do a 50 minute podcast. I think that the max for my students might be 5 to 9 minutes! More short ones should be better than fewer longer ones.

lucyonline