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A few weeks ago I posted extracts from an interview with Tim Bradburn of Connected Teaching, the continuing professional development network. Tim’s taken our hour-long chat (whilst I was still Director of E-Learning) and boiled it down into a manageable, focused 11 minutes.

What do you think? Do you agree with what I have to say?

The ideas I discuss in this interview feature in #uppingyourgame: an educator’s guide to productivity

Posted: April 19th, 2010
Categories: Education, Productivity
Tags: audio, Connected Teaching, Education, interview, MP3, Productivity, teaching, Tim Bradburn
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I’ve been getting into audiobooks recently, but have been frustrated that they’ve been in MP3 format. I want them in iTunes audiobook format!* This article explained most of what I cover in the screencast below, but I’m delighted to have figured out how to use Automator on Mac OSX to make the file-renaming a whole lot less tedious…

*As I explain in the video, having them in audiobook format rather than MP3 allows you to ‘bookmark’ a chapter if you don’t finish it. With MP3s you would have to start from the beginning again or fast-forward…

Posted: March 9th, 2010
Categories: Technology
Tags: audiobooks, Automator, guide, howto, iTunes, MP3, OSX
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I’ve decided to add a music section to dougbelshaw.com. If you head over to /music then you’ll find an installation of Opentape, some Open Source software that is very similar that used to power version 1 of Muxtape. I’ve added a link to the navigation menu at the top of this blog.

Every Sunday I plan to upload a new playlist of music I’ve been listening to during the week. This first playlist represents the amount of time I spend listening to ‘mashups’!

Posted: February 1st, 2009
Categories: Everything Else
Tags: mashups, MP3, music, Muxtape, Open Source, Opentape
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Read/act on this first: Podcasting: Step 1 – RSS and setting up a teacher blog

In the last session we set up a blog and learned what RSS was. Let’s just remind ourselves of what podcasting is, shall we?

So podcasting is when you deliver audio files to ‘subscribers’ automatically using an RSS feed. This RSS feed is generated automatically by the Posterous-powered blog you set up in Step 1.

In this session we’re going to be using a program called Audacity. This is available for all platforms – Windows, Mac and Linux. It is free and Open Source software. Audacity is already installed on the computers we shall be using at school, but if you need to download it at home, you can find it here: http://audacity.sourceforge.net

Note: we will need a ‘plugin’ for Audacity to be able to export to MP3 format, but we’ll leave that for next session!

Instead of re-inventing the wheel, we’ll be making use of the excellent video guides to using Audacity that can be found here: http://www.how-to-podcast-tutorial.com/17-audacity-tutorial.htm

These are the ones you should focus on today:

1. The editing tools
2. Basic editing and trimming your audio
3. Importing audio and adding music to your podcast

When you save your audio, just save it as a WAV file. We’ll work on exporting to MP3 next time. If you’re looking for music that you can legally and safely use in your podcasts, check out the links at the bottom of the Wikipedia page for ‘Podsafe’.

Posted: January 25th, 2009
Categories: Podcasting
Tags: Audacity, edte.ch, educational technology, elearning, elearnr, MP3, Open Source, podcast, Podcasting, RSS, WAV
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Sinclair Mackenzie and I are proud to present the next podcast under the auspices of EdTechRoundup. For those who don’t know, we’re a group of UK-based educators interested in the potential of educational technology to enhance teaching and learning. We’re a diverse bunch and anyone’s welcome to join us. There’s more details at our wiki – do feel free to join us on Sunday nights from 8-9.30pm!

EdTechRoundup podcast episode 4 is all about Internet Safety and features Ollie Bray – the man, the myth, the legend. He’s doing some great things up in Scotland that you really should hear about. So head over to the post to get the links and subscribe to the RSS feed, or just listen to us by clicking below!

Oh, and that absolutely rocking music at the start and end is the magnificent guitar solo from Muse‘s Knights of Cydonia. Of course.

Posted: May 5th, 2008
Categories: Education
Tags: audio, blogs, Doug Belshaw, edte.ch, EdTechRoundup, educational technology, MP3, Muse, podcast, Sinclair Mackenzie, wikis
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I’m delighted to announce that (eventually!) EdTechRoundup Podcast Episode 3 is now available for your listening pleasure. It’s around 33 minutes long and is centered around a conversation about the merits of blogs vs. wikis I had with Kristian Still.

The quality music inbetween sections is taken from the first few seconds of Justice’s One Minute To Midnight.

Posted: March 23rd, 2008
Categories: Technology
Tags: audio, blogs, Doug Belshaw, edte.ch, EdTechRoundup, educational technology, Justice, Kristian Still, MP3, podcast, wikis
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Amazon.com have launched a Digital Rights Management (DRM)-free online music store. Unlike Apple’s iTunes music store, music can be played on any device and, wait for it… it’s actually cheaper per song! Although the number of tracks available is currently somewhat limited, more music is likely to be added soon.

I’d love to buy music from Amazon MP3, but I can’t. It would seem you have to be a US citizen to purchase music in this way as I was unable to using my current credit card billing address. Hopefully it will be extended to Amazon UK soon. (more…)

Posted: September 25th, 2007
Categories: Technology
Tags: Amazon, credit card, DRM, iTunes, MP3, music, store, UK
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