Third-Stream Music Education

Student Blogs, The Sequel

December 8th, 2009

You might remember my struggles last school year to implement student online portfolios for all of my students, in the form of individual blogs. The short version: using Mac laptops, Garage Band audio software, iMovie video software and the school’s brand new Mac directory server, the system worked but was a royal pain in the neck. The recording and editing process was just as easy as you would expect on a Mac. However, the software included on the Mac directory server only does things one way; we had to use wikis instead of blogs, and we had to use Quicktime file types for the student videos. The result was that (1) the instructions for exporting the videos was three pages long and completely convoluted, and (2) file sizes were huge, causing upload and storage space issues. The school’s wireless access and internet reliability were also issues. When students could get their blogs finished the results were spectacular….but hit-and-miss learning tools are just no fun to use when your grade depends on the results. By the time I ceased requiring students to use the system in mid-April, cheers went up in every class. I was also relieved, and disappointed. The process was so draining that I elected to cease blogging about the experience until now.

Begin book two: new school, new technology in place. New pros and cons to navigate. The new school uses PC’s (boo) rather than Macs. We’ll use Audacity to record audio (hoping to add video later, but PC laptops are several years behind Macs in things like integrated webcams/mics), which I have used personally used on projects in the past (and which I have faith in, even though we’re using the 1.3 Beta). We’ll save the final cuts as “.mp3″ files rather than “.mov” using the LAME plugin (which is a lame acronym). We’ll use Microsoft’s Sharepoint server to run the online e-portfolios; the teachers here have been on Sharepoint for at least a year before I arrived in August, but the student Sharepoint server is brand-spanking new and my project will be the first on it. The school has slower and less reliable internet than my last, but seems to have a more reliable wireless access point network and a more reliable server.

The Technology Integration Specialist and I gave it a test run on a ProD day a couple of weeks ago. Worked like a charm. File sizes for one-minute mp3 files saved at full quality stereo are approximately 1.5 MB as would be expected (compared with 40-50 MB for similar .mov files last year). The only downside is that Sharepoint is not designed to hold imbedded media items (darn business-focused software), so audio and video files cannot play directly in the browser window (but I found a possible solution which I have forwarded to the tech department for consideration). Initial conclusions: I wish we were working with Mac laptops and with iMovie, but I am so glad to have a simpler and more reliable system for creating the online e-portfolios. The upside: reliability (hopefully). The downside: the e-portfolios look visually boring on the web page.

Monday and Tuesday this week I introduced my Advanced Band to the new system. Wednesday and Thursday will be our first recordings. I’ll report back next week with the results.

Entry Filed under: Technology