Archive for the 'Webcastacademy' Category

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Riding the Big Waves With Cris and Illya

Published on 2007-08-06 in CarlaArena, CrisCosta, Podcast, Webcastacademy, Webcasters-to-Be, Webcasting, Webheadsinaction and worldbridges. 5 Comments

 
icon for podpress  Standard Podcast [7:10m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Yes! We made it! Checked all the details. What you’ll hear is a quick, fun talk with Cris Costa and Illya. I used Audacity to record our conversation even having the automatic back up of Simplecast. With Audacity open, it’s much easier to edit when it’s over. I had to edit something I repeated twice in the beginning of the recording. Used more tools available this time in Audacity. Zoom really helps to get the right spot to cut. I used my USB mic and headphones and was working on a PC.
The problem I faced? At around 3 minutes, you’ll start to listen to an echo. I guess that’s because the girls were also testing all sorts of things with recording, mic, audacity settings. Any clues? That’s my guess. I’ll do it again to check for the echos. The one from the Audio Repeater is good enough! I don’t need any other.

My Checklist: Volume Control Properties
Mixer Device: SoundMax Digital Audio (my sound card)
Adjusted volume for Recording
Clicked on Wave out mix
In Skype
Tools – Options
Audio Settings
Microphone: AK5370
Speakers: SoundMax Digital Audio (my sound card)
Uncheck Let Skype Adjust my Audio Settings In Audacity
Audio Preferences
Recording Device: SoundMax Digital Audio (my sound card)
Channels: 1 (mono)
File Formats
MP3 Export Setup
Bit Rate: 64
Wave Out Mix in the Mic options (popup on the front page) (By the Way, I learned that this option was only possible for me if I dealt with the Volume properties first)
Simplecast
Click on Start (it doesn’t start streaming)
Config
General Options
Capture Sound from Device: SoundMax Digital Audio (my sound card)

Click on Encoders
Add New Encoder (+)
Config
Converter
Output Format Details
Codec: MP3
Bit Rate: 64kb/s
Sample Rate: 44,1 KHz
Channels: Stereo
Stream Archive
Click on Save stream to File
Server Details provided by Jeff
Start Encoder
Now Streaming
Checked the Webcastacademy
Name of the show on
Listened to the Stream
OK AudioCables Audio repeater
Wave in AK5370
Wave out Soundmax
Total Buffer 100 Start
Start Recording in Audacity
Skype Conference
Create Conference
Choose Contacts (Cris Costa and Illya)
Add Screenshot of Settings


Magic! We got it. We were planning to stream Cris Costa’s talk on her Master’s Dissertation, but I didn’t make it. The fact is that I could succesfully stream having these two wonderful partners as witnesses and having great fun with them. We realized that Webcasting is great because nobody will see our voices blushing! Thanks, girls, for taking your time to be there with me. Here’s the screenshot of the moment. We DO love the big waves in Audacity even if every time I have to amplify, but to a lower volume. What loud, excited Webcasters-to-Be we are!

Can’t wait for more!
Carla

How To Webcast – Lesson 2

Published on 2007-08-02 in CarlaArena, CrisCosta, Learning, Teaching, Webcastacademy, Webcasters-to-Be, Webcasting, Webheadsinaction, edtech, web2.0 and worldbridges. 1 Comment
Cris Costa Yesterday, Cris Costa posted her Webcasting reflections on her blog. She thoroughly describes how she managed to record both ends of a telephony call using Audacity. It was one of those WooHoo moments for all of us, Cris, Dennis Oliver, and me. Working together with them has certainly given me more motivation and self-confidence to go till the end with the webcasting project this time.
To read Cris’ reflections, access http://eduspaces.net/cristinacost/weblog/185600.html
To listen to the Magic of Collaboration, http://www.webcastacademy.net/node/1085

Interview with Justine – A Brazilian Leading a Team in India

Published on 2007-08-02 in BrazilBridges, CarlaArena, Podcast, Webcastacademy, Webcasters-to-Be, Webcasting, Webheadsinaction and worldbridges. 5 Comments
 
icon for podpress  A Brazilian Leading a Team in India [6:54m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

JustineJustine is a Brazilian who’s been living in the US for the past ten years. She’s just started a new challenging job. She is leading a Team in India. Their job is to make transcripts of the doctor’s records. A job that requires precision and on-time delivery of transcripts. Justine’s biggest challenge is to keep the Team motivated to do the job as requested by the clients.
I was curious about it. I wanted to know her impressions about her professional experience so far, mainly in terms of cultural aspects. Considering the American way of doing business is totally different from the Indian way, does a Brazilian have an advantage in dealing with people in India as we come from developing countries? Can we understand each other better in this professional world? Are there cultural barriers?
Listen to what Justine had to say about leading the Team in India and her funny story about a baby’s name.
This recording was part of my assignment, recording a two-way telephony call, for the Webcastacademy, as well as part of my collection of resources for a future project, BrazilBridges. Hope you enjoy the chat.
What are your own views on the topic? How can American enterprises deal with the cultural professional shock of doing business in countries that have a totally different cultural background that influences the way they do business?

Webcastacademy – All About Brigadeiros

Published on 2007-07-31 in BrazilBridges, CarlaArena, ErikaCruvinel, Learning, Podcast, Webcastacademy, Webcasting, Webheadsinaction, edtech and writingmatrix. 5 Comments
 
icon for podpress  All about Brigadeiros [6:59m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This podcast was part of the WebcastAcademy assignment of recording a Telephony Call. I talked to Erika Cruvinal via Skype and I used Audacity to record the conversation, as well as the Audio Repeater.
Our intent was to talk about something that is really part of our Brazilian culture. Brigadeiros are part of every Brazilian childhood’s memory. However, adults enjoy them, too. Birthday parties are not good enough without these sweet treats!


Ingredients:
1 can of Condensed Milk 2/3 tablespoons of cocoa 1 tablespoon of butter
Recipe:
Stir all the ingredients in a pan in medium heat. Keep stirring it until the caramel starts to get off the sides of the pan. Let it cool, then roll them with sprinkles. Grease your clean hands with butter, use a teaspoon, get a bit of the caramel, and roll them. Then, pass them on the sprinkles.

Webcasters-to-Be Adventures

Published on 2007-07-26 in BrazilBridges, CarlaArena, CrisCosta, ErikaCruvinel, Learning, Teaching, Webcastacademy, Webcasters-to-Be, Webcasting, Webheadsinaction, edtech, web2.0, worldbridges and writingmatrix. 8 Comments

A year ago I was invited by Jeff LeBow to be an intern at the Webcast Academy. It was a pleasure to have such an invitation. I felt I had to move on, learn new skills that could give me another perspective in this edtech world. I invited my friend Erika to be there with me. She had no option. She became an intern, too. We listened to Jeff’s screencasts, tried to record with Audacity, and failed! I was there every Sunday, at my in-laws house, inhaling that smoked barbecue smell, longing for some caipirinhas, but was there with Jeff’s gang of interns. I had lots of fun connecting to them, learning from them with their successes and failures.


At that time, I was trying to put the pieces of the puzzle of Webcasting together. I could connect some pieces, but others were just loose in my mind. Erika was pulling her blond hair out! We thought we’d never manage. It was not for us. However, we acquired many new skills then that we were not even aware of. We learned how to play around with audio/sound, we felt more confident about speaking out, speaking our minds, we used our knowledge (or lack of!) to take our students to a next level in the classroom through podcasts. I didn’t graduate at the Webcast Academy. I just received my USB Microphone when it was too late, for I didn’t feel like enduring. Or, at least, I thought so. I disconnected for a while. But, Worldbridges has always been in mind. Erika and I even started a Wiki page called BrazilBridges. The future in streaming was part of our plans!


After some period of other projects and webcasting disconnection, I started bumping into Jeff LeBow again in different venues. And I always reminded myself and him that I hadn’t discarded Webcasting. It was just a dormant project. Jeff was always there, a great listener, encouraging us to take the plunge. During the Webheads Convergence this year, I was listening to the streaming and participating in a skypecast. I connected to Cheryl Oakes (Women of Web 2.0), whom I had met in our fantastic EVO session – BaW – in 2006, and Doug Symington, who became a successful Webcaster. I started blabbing, talking about drinks, Key West, then into more serious stuff. I didn’t know we were LIVE! I thought the webcasting was over. Mistake! I was saying all those trivial things for who knows who? At the same night, I had an interesting talk about education and web 2.0 tools with Jeff and Doug. I couldn’t sleep! My mind kept processing what I heard and said. I reconnected! Yes, Webcasting!


I needed a project for the Webcasting venue, and partners, too! Webcasting is a team process, not an individual achievement. During the Webheads Convergence, I was in the WIA chatroom with some friends. The chat started, and all of a sudden it ended up with our idea to do something fun, informal, informative, organic together. The Teachers4TELL (Technology-Enhanced Language Learning) idea evolved. We planned things, created a Wiki, a Yahoogroups, but still we needed to learn how to Webcast!!! We had a tentative date for our first get-together. It didn’t happen. We were not prepared for Webcasting. Jeff was there, communicating with us, giving me a streaming crash course using Yugma, but still we were not ready, I was not ready.


Some time passed by…In between emails, chats, ideas, Cris Costa, Dennis Oliver and I decided to become interns at the Webcast Academy. Our ideas were not enough to Webcast. We needed technical skills. Cris, just like me, was also a frustrated streamer. Yesterday, was our day! We had previously gone through all of the Book of Webcasting Screencasts and decided to meet to see if we could get something out of our headphones! I tried first, before connecting to Cristina. Speechless when I heard my voice in the Webcast Academy Sandbox! I was streaming, my heart thumping! WoW moment. Then, Cris and I went step-by-step with all the windows, softwares, input, output, and she was also able to stream. How cool is that?! We were overexcited with our accomplishments of the day. The adventure and challenge have just begun. The Revolution has started!

We had some technical problems because of lack of knowledge or forgetfulness (too many details to handle!) in our collaborative venture, but we are sure we’ll solve them together and with the intrepid (in Cheryl’s words) Webcast Academy gang. Jeff, thanks for bearing with us and never giving up on these Portuguese-speaking girls! Webcasting is all about connecting and believing you can.

Learning How to Webcast

Published on 2007-07-26 in CarlaArena, CrisCosta, Learning, Teaching, Webcastacademy, Webcasters-to-Be, Webcasting, Webheadsinaction, edtech, web2.0 and worldbridges. 2 Comments
This time if for real. Things have been set. Commitments have been made. There’s no way back now. No one is going to stop us either! We are going to make the best of it.My first attempt to learn how to Webcast dates back to the beginning of this year, when I naïvely thought I could handle the co-moderation of a 6-week e-workshop and the active participation in webcastacademy, which was running at the same time. Jeff Lebow makes it all seem so easy that I thought I could do it too, in spite of all the changes that were going on in my life at that time. Ah ah ah! What a joke! Anyway, the intention was genuinely good, but as you can imagine, I didn’t even make it to the end of the first session. The road to hell is also paved with loads of good intentions, so they say!!
Six months later a new opportunity to learn how to stream emerges from two groups of people that are now coming together.
After the WiAOC 2007, which offered several opportunities for people to be part of webcasts, a group of friends, motivated by the dynamics that such events offer, decided they should start some events of their own… just for fun! …Just to give back a little bit of what they have gained from being part of the process, too!
So far, a group of people willing to become webcasters has been formed. A name and a generic purpose for the project have also been defined. I won’t be giving further detail about it, because it is still in the very beginning, but be ready to start taking part in some webcasts in the following academic year, where diversity of perspectives and futuristic approaches are the epithet of this project.
And so it’s started. In the beginning of this week Carla Arena and I met online, after having downloaded the webcast Kit. We went through all the steps together. I must say that I got a lot from that skype – peer to peer – meeting. Carla was really patient, and if it hadn’t been for my lousy wireless connection I could have been able to sustain the streaming for longer. But the important thing is that we made it! Our first attempt was really positive.
Working together is always much more motivating and everything seems also to become much clearer, when you get people on the side – even if it is on the other side of the screen, which in this case, was also on the other side of the ocean!
I had a lot of fun, and as Carla said, we were, and are, engaging in true collaboration. I can’t think in a best way of learning, can you?
This is a golden chance, and I am surely not going to miss it this time!