Flickr VS. YouTube...No contest!!

I have seen the Flickr logo everywhere but I never knew exactly what it was and how it worked.  After watching the video, I decided I would dive in and see exactly what Flickr is about.  I looked through the creative commons and Flickr commons and didn’t find a large variety of photos.  The creative commons had more to offer than the Flickr commons but it still did not have enough diversity for my liking.  Flickr also did not seem very user friend. I was not impressed with this application and I don’t think I would carry it over into my classroom. 

YouTube on the other hand, can benefit classroom instruction especially in a high school journalism courses.  YouTube is comprised of endless videos about various different topics….you name it, you can find it.  Say you want to find a video about tracking and finding Big Foot, I bet you can find thousands on YouTube.  Journalism students can record news segments or personal interest stories and post them on YouTube for the entire school population to view.  Preparing and recording news segments will help journalism students develop several skills such as: news gathering, writing news segments, operating a camera, controlling lighting and sound, speaking on camera, editing, and downloading final projects to YouTube.  It takes several people to write, produce, and record a segment and YouTube videos will allow students to get the overall experience.  I will also give every student the opportunity to work on different aspects of preparing a news segment.  I want each student to get the chance to research stories, gather news, write stories, use technology to record and edit stories, and deliver a news segments.  I will also ask student to critique and provide feedback to their classmates.  This type of interactive learning will allow students to becoming better journalists. 

Internet Safety Photostream

Invasion of the Pod People

Using podcasts in a high school journalism class will allow students to be exposed to broadcasting their news stories to an audience. Colleges and some high schools have radio stations which allow students to create radio shows and play music for students across campus. Podcasts will allow high school students with limited resources to have the same experience as campuses with radio broadcasting capabilities. According to Ricardson, “About $100 and an Internet connection is all you need to start doing regular radio shows with your students” (pg. 115). As the instructor I will find podcasts created by high school students and subscribe to them in order to expose my students to various existing podcasts. By subscribing to podcasts, as mentioned by Richardson, iTunes will automatically check for and provide me with new episodes to download and listen to (pg. 114). As a class, we can listen to existing high school podcasts and we can identify sections we would like implement into our own podcast. By collecting ideas from existing podcasts and brainstorming original ideas we can then develop a storyboard for the podcast we will begin broadcasting. As a class, we must decide if we want to do a class podcast, group podcasts, or individual podcasts. I would suggest a class podcast which will focus on specific topics on certain days of the week. For example, Mondays can be an entertainment segment, which can include weekend movie reviews. Sports and news segments can also be broadcast on separate days and this will give each group adequate time to plan their segment for each week. A podcast will allow students to showcase their segments to the entire student body, as well as, teachers, parents, and surrounding communities.

My embedded silly podcast

Fun, Silly Podcast Scripts

I had fun with this one at first!  I was hesitant about just talking about something for 2 + minutes so I researched and found a fun little script to do with my son.  I have been sharing the technology I am learning in class with him on a daily basis.  He is one that helped me with the Superhero survey. The following are some of the issues I had while creating this podcast.

1. My son has several allergies so I had to do a ton of editing in order to cut out all the sneezing, coughing, and wheezing.
2. I could not figure out how to download a song using Soundcloud and ccMixter.  I tried for hours and was unsuccessful.  I think both these websites are far from being user friendly
3. I could not download my MP3 file.  I tried for 2 evenings until I finally figured it out...FRUSTATING!!

Below are the links to my podcast. ENJOY!

http://ccmixter.org/content/raynaynae/raynaynae_-_Silly_Podcast.mp3

https://soundcloud.com/renee-aguirre/podcast-script-final