How 2 create a natural soundscape

It's the start of the year and I'm struggling a bit with the annual power struggle over who makes the rules in the classroom. Of course it's me, but I've never been happy with the process of establishing that, with all of its top-down implications. I like the result, but the process is very stressful - what with all of the envelope-pushing and peeing on hydrants and such. I'm coming home exhausted, grinding my teeth at night and am frustrated that I'm not doing something that shows more wisdom.

Feeling very stressed out, I started searching for some soothing music to play while grading some online homework submissions, but everything was distracting and added to my stress rather than lessening it. Then I remembered a nature-sounds LP that I used to play while studying in college (yes, I'm old enough to have taken a record player to college), so I did a google search on "nature sounds".

And I found this little bit of loveliness:

This elegantly simple miracle is called a "Free Nature Sounds Mixer" and it can be found at http://naturesoundsfor.me/

Right now I just have it playing while I work in another tab, but if I wanted to I could download my soundscape as a 1-30 minute long file.

In the time it has taken me to open up this blog post, I am NOTICABLY less stressed - I just literally felt the tense muscles in my forehead relax.

Every single one of my class openings will include a 3-minute calm-down that features this mix tomorrow. I'll report back on the students' reactions.

How 2 Make A Recording on the Web

This is Audio Pal, which is a clever little web-based audio recording service. You record or upload your content and they send you an email. The email takes you to another part of their site that gives you embed code for a fairly diverse range of sites (including Blogger).



You can make a recording several different ways - here's one I made over the phone:



You can also type up to 600 characters and use text-to-speech to create an audio file:


I tried making a recording using two different computer microphones - one that was USB and one that used the "normal" mic jack - but the site seemed to get stuck on "processing" and I didn't see any change in the site itself during the recording (the "time elapsed" indicator didn't indicate any time elapsed....). It might just be a glitch today, or possibly something goofy that happened because of the machine or network I'm on today.


Finally, you can upload an MP3 that you've created (maybe with Audacity??). I would recommend STRONGLY against uploading anything you didn't create (I don't have anything like that handy at the moment, but I'll come back and ammend this post later when I do).

All told - I'm impressed - especially by the phone feature.

How 2 Create Unhackable Passwords

We all know that we're supposed to have a different password for every site, service and machine. We also know that we're never going to remember that many different passwords.

Most people use ridiculously easy-to-hack passwords. Many actually write their password on a note that is RIGHT NEXT TO THE MACHINE WHERE THEY LOG IN.

I've been reading a lot of articles about how to create and maintain secure passwords, and the general consensus is that you should create a SYSTEM instead of a single password.

There are two schools of thought on the system:
1. a physical system - use a password that makes a shape on the keyboard, and vary it regularly in an easy-to-remember way (for example, you always start with "4" in April and "5" in May)

2. a pattern system - use a root password that varies according to what you're logging in to. I use a variation of this system, and it works REALLY well.

First you need a root password. I recommend that you choose something that includes both letters and numbers but isn't a real word. My root is the first letter of the words of a saying that was very important to me when I was in college. Some of the articles I saw recommended using parts of two or three words.  The numbers I use are actually a mistake - I started using these particular numbers for a numeric password thinking that they corresponded to the buttons on the phone that corresponded to those initials (obviously this was before I got into texting), but I got it wrong. I was in a hurry because I'd just broken up with someone who knew my code number for the ATM and I was concerned about that. By the time I realized my mistake, I was used to those numbers.

So let's say your favorite saying is "Let a smile be your umbrella" - using my system, your root password would be LASBYU527298  (assuming that you got the numbers right!)

Now - this is a really good password for a number of reasons - since the letters aren't a real word, it will be difficult for someone to casually watch and know what you're typing, whereas it wouldn't take long to figure out a password like "puppy" or "california" or even "password" (which is apparently a very common choice). It also uses both hands, assuming you know how to touch type (if you don't - what the heck is wrong with you?).

However, it is still vulnerable to hacking if you use the same thing for everything you log in to - sure your bank website is super-duper secure, but the site that remembers your favorite comic strips? Probably not so much. It wouldn't take a hacker long to pull your password from the comic strip site and try it at all the major banks.

So - you customize the password to the site. You might use the first and last letter of the service, so for facebook, your password would be FLASMYU527298K and for hotmail it would be HLASMYU527298L

If you really wanted to be fancy, you could put a customization letter in the middle, maybe from the middle of the name of the site like this:

F*******B*******K (with the two parts of your root in the asterisks)

or even the first and last letter of each syllable
F*****EB*******K 


Whatever system you choose - pick it, stick with it and you're all set for life.

But what if you have a site that makes you change your password every so often?
Many workplaces in particular require a password change ever 30, 60 or 90 days. The last time I had to do this, I changed it every single month (there is rarely a system that does not let you change your password more often than what is required), and added the three-letter abbreviation for the current month as well as the number for the month to my root passwords.

EG: *******JAN********01 would become *********FEB*******02


Another idea - if you have a family whose birthdays are spread around the calendar pretty evenly - why not incorporate their name and birthday into your pattern?

By now, you either have a pattern in mind, or your own mind is coming up with great new variations - please share your ideas (obviously not with your actual passwords!) in the comments section

How 2 Share Presentations or Documents on the Web

Powerpoint has pretty much replaced posterboard for research projects that are either supposed to be "more fun" than traditional research papers, or that really do need more visuals than straight text.

However - there are a great many possible formats to these, and the introduction of Microsoft Office 2007, with its members-only format, has made transferring these projects from student computer to teacher computer extra-difficult.

Plus - there's always the problem of "I saved the wrong version" or "my email won't let me send a file that big".

Try www.slideshare.net



Slideshare will handle up to 100MB files in the following formats:
Presentations: pdf, ppt, pps, pptx, ppsx, pot, potx (Powerpoint); odp (OpenOffice); key, zip (Apple Keynote).
Documents: pdf, doc, docx, rtf, xls (MSOffice); odt, ods(OpenOffice); Apple iWork Pages.

You can choose for your document to be viewable by the whole world, just you, or somewhere in between. You can make your file downloadable or not.

This is a free site but it requires a log-in. There is also a short wait time while your file is processed before you can access it. For this blog post, I created a 3-slide powerpoint file and it took just a few seconds to upload, and it was availble for viewing in about 3 minutes.

Not only can your presentation now be viewed (small or full-screen) from any internet-connected computer, but you can generate embed code to post anywhere AND you can email a link to anyone. If you like, slideshare will import your address book from most of the popular webmail services.

Others (from the world, or from the list of people you invited) can leave comments.

There are tools on the site to add in an audio file to create what they call a "slidecast" - this is not to upload music - it's intended for a recording of a speaker who might be using the presentation. [note: make this recording with audacity] If you click on the link for that option, there are several help files available that will guide you through the process of synchronizing the audio file and the visual of your slides.


You can even post a transcript of the audio portion of your presentation.

Most of the presenters at an educational technology convention I recently attended used this site to post the presentation materials they used. A few talked about how they taught their students to use it for projects.

Here's the presentation I created to test this out:

Sample Presentation

View more presentations from awaldfogle.

How 2 get a week's worth of news in a 2-minute rap

Hey history teachers..........

check this out - impress your students with your hipness
(the kids still say "hip" right?.............right?)

www.theweekinrap.com

How 2 make your brain explode with possibilities

Ramussen College in Minnesota recently published a list of

100 Apps for Tech-Savvy Teachers

and I thought I knew a few things about educational tech........oh my

How 2 make embeddable screen shots and even movies

This one involves some software that you have to install on your computer - but it's free, and free is a good price.

It's also AWESOME and so handy I can't believe I survived before discovering it.

www.jingproject.com

I use this to create virtually all of the screen-shots that I post on this blog - mostly because of the awesome ability to instantly generate imbed code. The image itself is posted on Jing's website, and the embed code is saved to my clipboard.

You can download files too, but so far I've only used the embed code generator - there's a tiny bit of work involved in creating a button to generate embed code, but the help information walks you right through it.

You can also draw a screen-shot box and record a video clip of what you're doing on the screen. If you have a microphone on your computer, it will record your voice as you describe what you're doing. Again, you can tell it to generate imbed code and you get something like this:



There's a video on the jing site that goes into more detail - but I can promise you, once you start playing with this, you will use it for EVERYTHING!!!

How 2 Create a trip itinerary

Most of the services where you buy airline tickets, car rentals, hotel reservations will send you email confirmations. Some will give you a url for the portion of your itinerary that you arranged through them.

www.tripit.com will put all of these in one handy location for you - you can then access it whenever you like, and you can send links to your friends, family or co-workers.

TripIt will send your itinerary to a smartphone, iPhone or any text-capable phone as well as alerts to keep you on schedule!



The website is free but does require registration.

How 2 create a self-playing webquest

Teachers often create lists of websites they want their students to use for a project - but the challenge becomes: how do you get the students to go to those sites, not wander all over the internet, and not get frustrated by the challenges of typing in a bunch of addresses when the internet is very unforgiving of type-o's?

Enter "Furly", which can be found at www.fur.ly


You can enter any number of addresses - each time you click on the field to enter one, the next empty field appears. When you're done, click GO.

The website will give you a very short url like this one --> http://fur.ly/e63

When a student enters this short url, they will see your first site with a navigation controls bar across the top that allows them to click back and forth among the list of sites in your list.

Go ahead and try the one I created to see what it's like. The address is permanent, at least it is as permanent as anything on the internet is...

It would be a very easy thing to require students to only work in your list of pre-approved sites, and very easy to monitor by looking for the orange navigation bar across the top.

how 2 make a bibliography

www.bibme.com

SO many hours of my life lost to bibliography creation and searching for sources!!!!

This website is free, but you do need to register for an account if you want to save work and come back to it later. If you have all of your information at one time, you do not even need to log in.

BibMe will create a bibliography from very little information about your sources - it uses amazon.com and other resources to pull all of the pertinent information about publishers, copyright date, multiple authors etc. You just supply a title, partial title or even just keywords and choose your resource from a list.

(this means that you can use BibMe to locate sources that will be useful to your research as well - pretty cool, huh?)



As you see from this screenshot, BibMe can handle a variety of types of resources. Once everything is entered, you can print directly in a number of formats (APA, MLA, etc.) or your can copy and paste the resulting page into your final document.

How 2 download a YouTube Video, part 2

This is a really sa-weet trick....

1. find a youtube video you like
2. wait for it to load up and start playing
3. click in the url right in between "www." and "youtube" so that the cursor fits in right in front of the "y"
4. type "kick" in that spot so that the url now reads "www.kickyoutube.com/blahblahblah" and press the [ENTER] key on the keyboard

When the page re-loads, you will see a new toolbar across the top of the page that has buttons for a wide array of video formats and a green "GO" button at the far right.

Click on your favorite format, and click "GO" to convert your YouTube clip.

Thhe "Go" button will turn into a blue "Download" button - RIGHT-click on that and choose "save link as" from the pop-up menu. Give it a name, choose where you want to save, and done.

*note* if you google "kick youtube" you'll go to a site that offers a download that will accomplish this same task - you don't need it.

How 2 record an audio clip

the website is www.vocaroo.com and it's a terrific little free gizmo that allows you to record an audio message through your computer's built-in or plug-in microphone and will then generate a link or embed code for it.

Nothing to download and no limit on the length, but there is no edit or download. Still - it's pretty darned cool.

How 2 Save a YouTube Video as a file

A student actually turned me on to this web conversion tool.

www.mediaconverter.org

This site is very easy to use. All you need is the address of the youtube (or other) site.



1. Click on the icon that says "enter a link".
2. enter the web address in the field that appears and click OK
3. You will return to the original screen, but now there is a green arrow that says "go to the next step" - click that arrow (it's easy to overlook this)
4. Choose the file format you want - you'll notice there is quite a selection :) .wmv will work for most PC applications, .avi is used by QuickTime, and mpeg will work for most everyone.
5. Click OK and then wait for your conversion to happen




MAKE SURE YOU CLICK THE DOWNLOAD LINK before you navigate away from this last screen - and be aware of the daily limit to 5 downloads with the free version of this website. For a subscription fee, you can have unlimited downloads and unlimited file sized, but the free version has sufficed for me so far.

You'll also notice the ability to strip audio from posted videos, and the ability to change almost any audio or video format into almost any other.

It's a sweet site.