About AudioBlogger

As you probably noticed, my last posting was a bit different in that it was an audio posting. I don't know if this was a new experience for you, but it certainly was for me. Now that I have done this, and seen just how easy it is to do, my mind is beginning to process the possibilities that this might exist for using this tool in a classroom.

Now when I created the audio post I used my cell phone w/ headset plugged in. When I did this I pictured myself driving into work and adding a post to my blog as I commute the 30 min. to CRES from my home in Windham. Now I find that my mind is usually at its most creative either early in the morning (post coffee, of course) or late at night. So I can imagine creating audio posts as I am driving along in my truck. For a classroom teacher who has a blog they can be providing content to their students as they are driving, sitting at the beach, or imagine this, sitting at a conference. This last possibility really gets me excited because when I am at a really good conference and listening to a dynamic speaker my wheels start turning in my head. I need to be able to process and document what is going on in my head right then and there before it gets lost or replaced by some other new pieces of information. Audioblogger could be the solution to this.

Another use that just came to mind is if a teacher is sick or away from their class for some reason and they want to alter an assignment or give special instructions that the substitute does not have in their plans then they could upload this audio post right from the comfort of their bed or doctor's office. I am sure that other uses will come to mind as the days go by.

Now at first I thought there were some limitations to AudioBlogger, but, if you know a litte about html code there is a way to get around these limitations. First, let's talk about using the phone. You don't HAVE to use a phone if you are willing to host your own audio files to your web server. Second, you are not limited to only 5 min of recording if, once again, you are willing to host the audio on your web server. Third, now this is a biggie, you can also include a video post.
Here's how:
Below is the html code that is generated to make your audioblogger play as a post:
[div class="audblog"][a href="http://www.audioblogger.com/media/131264/398283.mp3" class="audLink"][img src="http://www.audioblogger.com/media/images/audioblogger.gif" class="audImg"border="0" alt="this is an audio post - click to play" /][/a][/div]


If you upload an audio file to your web server all you neet to do is change the url that the audioblogger play button is pointed to and it will play the audio you uploaded. For example: I can copy this code, start a new post, paste this code in, change the url to www.sad61.k12.me.us/~rpalmer/baseball.mov and once I publish the post I have myself a link to a video post. In this case it is my son's baseball team. In doing this, I can create a snazzy and professional sounding podcast-like post, upload it to my server, and then point a new post to that file. So, I can basically alter few limitations there are to AudioBlogger just by tweaking the code a little. Pretty Cool!