Wednesday, May 28, 2008

CreateSpace

What a great idea! Amazon now offers createspace.com, where people can create music or DVD's, send them to the company for professional processing, and sell them!

Thursday, May 8, 2008

Week 9: Thing 23

So I guess this is the end of the course. I explored things I never thought of and discovered some great new sites and ways to communicate. I really appreciate the opportunity to learn this stuff so that I can use it to my advantage. We should always be bettering our education, yes?
I hope the next course includes how to podcast and how to have an effective website. While I am going to branch out on my own and try to discover, I would love to be led a little to the right places. Technology is changing so fast that I don't want to start something and have it already be obsolete.
Thanks again for the opportunity. I won't shut this blog down. Hopefully, I will start my new section on health and hopefully it will be linked up to a website before too long.

Week9:

Week 9: Thing 21

I'm really interested in how TO podcast, so after this computer class, I will be working on that. I think it would be a great addition to my future website. That's a summer project for me. I'v been listening to several podcasts for a while: Pandora radio and NPR are pretty great. The Education Podcast website is really cool. Just in music education alone, there are tons of worthy podcasts. One from Quincy Jones, one by Gibson guitars, several on pedagogy, and studies of classical music. It's overwhelming. I tried to RSS the Quincy Jones one, but it failed. I usually get them through itunes, which is very simple.

Week 9: Thing 20

So I use youtube.com for my own family videos, and I love sending videos to family far away. www.youtube.com/johnericharper . I also search for music videos and interesting musicians on youtube. It is the era of indie music and plenty of exposure for lots of young musicians (and old). There is one guy who does the most incredible mouth percussion ever. His video is in the kitchen, where he "mixes" together sounds and does it all through his mouth. Pretty incredible. There is also a movie coming out on Bobby Bowden, so some of those clips have been on youtube. And I just found out this morning that my fitness certification company, ACE, also has a youtube channel, so I will check that out when I get home.
I like teachertube, though there is not much music just yet.
I found yahoo videos, which has some pretty funny ones, but not anything as good as you tube.
I also found out about yahoo teachers, thanks to this search, which is not quite up and running yet, but it looks like it will be a peertrainer but for teachers. That will be good. I look forward to that.

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Week 8: Thing 19

Library Thing is cool. I won't use it very often, so I didn't sign up, but it's good to know it's there. I love books, of course, but these days, it's all about going to the library and letting my child pick out some great childrens books.
I'm always looking for books that I can use in the music room. Books that can be broken down into rhythm or that have some music to them are great for my kids. So, I will probably use the site to find other musicians who use books in the same way.

Week 8 Thing 18b

And zoho has lots of other applications that other sites charge for; it's worth it for people who do web meetings and such.

Week8 Thing 18

I could kick myself. I like this zolo thingie, but I accidentally deleted the confirmation email, so I won't be able to use it unless I start over again. It's good to know that this service exists for free! The google one, from what I can tell, is pretty much the same.
I created a wiki on wikispaces and deleted it a day later. I don't see myself keeping it up. I'll be checking in on others, though. What a great idea.

Thursday, May 1, 2008

Week 7: Thing 17

I tried this whole wiki thing. It seems like a great idea, so we'll see if I actually do anything with it. I have an educators wiki on wikispaces, but it's a health ed one instead of music. I think it's weird that anybody can go in there and do what they want. It makes me think that kids can sabotage their teachers' wikis. Hopefully not.

Week 7: Thing 16

How cool. Distance learning is the thing now, which worries me a little. I mean, It's great for a class or two, or for teachers to learn new stuff, or for certain degrees...but I hope it's not getting close to the end of the college and university as we know it. There is so much more to school besides...school. And the kids these days are so virtual that they are starting to forget about the art of socialization.
Anyway, the teacher wiki is really neat. It is open, so teachers from everywhere can put their 2 cents in. Through there is teachertube.com , the video spot for teacher ideas. Very cool.