Zondle Update: Sound out and Read Throughs Using Soundclips created on my mobile

The developers at Zondle have been fantastic responding quickly and enthusiastically to a query/request I had about the ability to provide readthroughs to followand support sounding out in the Phonics games I had begun to make at the beginning of the holidays.

Thanks to the Zondle team I have been able to update these games by uploading additional soundfiles I have created that correspond to each of the words used in the quiz behind them.  This may be a new notion to some readers, recording sound using the computer, so I have chalked this on my to do list, a post  to explain how to do this and some of the options available.  Recording on the computer is not as complex a process as it may seem, in fact being away from my desk as it were for month or so I was forced to improvise and experiment with the equipment I had to hand. My Microphone and recording software tools were in Bristol and I was in the North East. The result was that the recordings for these games were made not on the computr at all but on my mobile phone.  (I am accompanied for short bursts on one or two of the clips by my nephew who was "helping" me and playing the games as we went, so please excuse the far from studio quality sound).

The Phone in question was an HTC windows phone, and I used the Audio Recorder to create each short sound clip.  For each of the words in my quiz I made separate sound clips by pressing the record button, speaking as clearly as possible the word into my handset before pressing the stop button.  As I finished each sound clip, it was renamed from the default filke name with the word it held.

I used my USB cable to connect the phone to my Netbook, though I could have removed the Micro SD card from the phone and used a card reader to access the files I had made.  Navigating to the "My Voices" Folder I located the sound clips and copied them to my Netbook for editing.  Unfortunately the AMR  format files on my phone were not compatable with the games platform at Zondle, which required MP3 files.

Not to be discouraged I searched for a tool that would convert my AMR files to the correct format and found a piece of freeware called  AMR to MP3 Converter.  I downloaded and installed this before following instructions on the website to convert the soundfiles.  Once converted to MP3 format I logged into zondle, navigated to my quize, chose to edit my quiz and thn added each of the sound files to the appropriate word in my quiz.

Now I have done this with my phone and netbook once I have a clear path/process to follow.
1. Create my word list or quiz in Zondle.
2. Using my audio recorder on the phone, create my sound files.
3. Import my sound files from the phone to my PC
4.Using AMR toMP3 converter, change my sound fle to the MP3 format.
5. Upload my soundfiles to my quiz at Zondle
6.   Publish my chosen games to an online space for the students to access.

You can try out the updated games that use these files on my previous post Phonic Games and Zondle. 

Wondering now  whether I could use this or a similar process with my Key Stage 3 and 4 students  to create podcasts and talking heads activities thruogh their mobiles.... Hmmmm.... ;0)  We have Blackberries and iPhones, I have micro SD card readers... what do you reckon!

Making a Portable Apps Tool Box

Imagine an ICT toolbox that you can carry in your pocket. A resource set that everyone could share for free. No need to beg that the tools you regularly and choose to use be installed on the platforms you will use before you begin a session. A cornucopia of hope?!*

On Thursday evening I found myself browsing Computer magazines in a Local Supermarket and drawn to the caption "Ultimate Portable Software, store top programs in a USB stick" on the cover of "Web User" magazine. With the Idea of "Anywhere, Anytime Learning," and the principles of "collect, store and share," firmly in my mind, from a funding grant bid this week, the prospect of having a potential toolbox that could be carried in mine or my student's pocket was an Intriguing prospect, and one I decided to investigate further through a visit to the core website, PortableApps mentioned in the article.

PortableApps are versions of existing open source environments, that have been redeveloped for download and installation to run from portable devices such as USB flash drives and mp3 players, and maybe even as the site suggests your iPOD. Once installed to the device, simply docking it with a computer and running the interface or application's .exe file the user has access to a set of generic and "familiarish" applications. Why familiarish, well this is a me thing, keen to try out the GIMP, running from my flash drive to edit the image above, took a little playing with before I finally worked around the process that would have taken seconds in the tool I usually use. This however is no hardship simply a quirk of the tool, and part of a learning process we go through now and again when engaging with something new.

Visiting PortableApps and downloading these applications today has really stimulated me to think about the potentials they offer from a curricular point of view, in terms of shared and common tool access. Since these tools are open source they are free to download, use and distribute under GNU licensing, which could have huge potential for us, as we seek to address issues such as home access to tools and the proposed "digital divide." These tools could potentially enable access to all students for the cost of a flash drive, to a tool box that could be selected from to support a collect store and share process developed through home based learning, and accessible on any windows based machine. So what tools did I think might be useful and download to my flash drive to play with:

Accessibility Tools

• On-Screen Keyboard Portable - on-screen keyboard
  

Graphics & Pictures

• GIMP Portable - Photo and Image Editor

Internet

• Nvu Portable - KompoZer Portable - WYSIWYG Web Page Editor
  
• FileZilla Portable - FTP client (our Website is not entirely web 2.0 yet)
• Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition - the award-winning web browser (love it and we haven't been able to run happily on our network yet)
  
• Mozilla Thunderbird, Portable Edition - email client including RSS feed reader

Music & Video

• Audacity Portable - Audio editor and recorder
• MPlayer Portable - Movie player with support for most video formats
• VirtualDub Portable - video processing and capture utility
• VLC Media Player Portable - Media player that plays most audio and video formats
• CDEX Portable - My favourite Audio CD Ripping tool
  

Office

• Mozilla Sunbird, Portable Edition - Calendar and task management
• OpenOffice.org Portable - word processor, spreadsheet, presentations with Microsoft compatibility
• PDFTK Builder Portable - split, collate, watermark and password protect PDF documents
• Sumatra PDF Portable - PDF viewer

Utilities

• 7-Zip Portable - File archiver and compressor
• ClamWin Portable - Antivirus on the go
• PeaZip Portable - Easy to use file archiver and compressor
• PortableApps.com Menu - integrated start menu bundled with the platform
  

There has been considerable debate and discussion about open source versus commercial product use in education for some time, but the emergence and recent excitement generated by devices such as the Asus ee, developed around the Linux GUI and shipped with Open source tools seems set to at least for the time being reduce polarisation of this debate shifting our attention to addressing how we intend to integrate, embed and use these devices to enhance and change our view of home school learning. Using them initially as "collect, store and share devices," is how I hope to begin this process, with colleagues and students within our portables project. Exploring how we extend home school learning tasks, through the planning and creation of content for inclusion in shared school based activities using existing tools and online environments we already use and are familiar with. Providing a local, common and shared set of applications, in the first instance means that students would not be entirely disadvantaged by not having web access at home, as content developed away from school can be built on and shared through access to a wireless infrastructure and classroom based web acccess, or alternatively direct transfer to the network through flash drive. To enable this however the tools for the job must be available. Certainly the Asus provides a basic toolbox, but it would be handy to be able to run other more complex tools as the students become more familiar with the process, if we would like them to support driving innovation. Since current E Safety considerations limit access to the web 2.o world in schools then local apps are required to do this, many of which are currently not available through edu suppliers for Linux based systems, or Window's Mobile Environments for that matter. Portable Apps has a watch this space.. regarding Linux based versions of the applications they currently offer, but certainly these tools seem to me to offer enormous potential in enabling expansion of the tools provided. So in answering my opening question probably more a cornucopia of hope than a complete solution, but certainly something well worth keeping an eye on. In the meantime I will play with the toolbox I have just compiled, and continue to chew over some of the ideas.

Me and My Mobile 2: Task List and Word for mobile

This is great, been looking forward to it all week, and at last sitting toasty on the retimed 8.15 train for Paddington, am finalising tasks for my visit to BETT today. Targets

• To leave with as little paper as possible,
• Pick up a few trial software samples to try out at home and with the students.
• Review some of the new control titles especially "2Simple control nxt" and "Go-Robo," though a chance to look at flow go and Flowol 3 at first hand would also be good.
• Get a demo of "honeycomb," from Softease, and take a look at "Podium 2" before the upgrade arrives
• Pick up a copy of Comic Life.
• Take another look at the Asus PC, a platform I first saw at the hhl conference, but following feeds this week seems to getting a lot of interested press from fellow bloggers.
• Touch Base with Anthony Evans, am really looking forward to this as we have chatted through Google, and Twitter for a ages now, but really looking forward to meeting him face to face.

This year I am traveling light. a packed lunch, PDA, digital camera, mp3 player, Guardian Link E Supplement, and show badge. Preparing for the visit over the last couple of days, I copied acrobat floormaps to my PDA, and created a to do list, of personal must sees and dos based on recent press and industry releases, adding stand numbers to help find my way round. Now with Latte in hand, and the flooded landscape of the South West England flowing past the window (literally it seems, after last night's heavy rains, the River Avon now occupies fields that usually meet the railway) am Reading the guardian link e supplement, and adding to the already full day I have planned. Fortunately some of these coincide with stands I intended to visit anyway such 2Simple's proposed online tool set.

Its been a while since I used one finger typing, a process currently akin to input through the PDA touch screen. So far it has been really slow going writing this entry but hopefully as I become more familiar with the keyboard this will speed up. Mobile Word being compatible with the PC version means I can draft thoughts today, and then do revisions and editing on screen when I get home before uploading to my blog later. In addition I want to see just how portable and flexible the tool can be, by perhaps using some of the ideas raised at the Handheld Learning Conference around, "collect, store and share," capturing images as well as my ramblings in one place, to transfer and share later in another format, and so fits with my multi tool approach to teaching and learning with ICT.
Today's posts are part of a personal experiment and will form part of a series of me and my mobile posts, that I discussed previously.

In addition to the wireless keyboard, I really must look into the process of adding mobile Internet access to the tool. Reading this as I write, it seems odd that current reflections will actually be read after the fact, asynchronously and back dated. Visiting HHL and experiencing the liberating feeling of mobile access and particularly "moblogging," it seems to me that the real power of this process for students, combined with web 2.0 tools would come from publishing on the move, and the sequence of events in diary type entries if seen live as they were written. Anyway thats something for later, but is already something that has got me thinking.