I had two opportunities to use my new found techniques on a class of pre-service teachers. My first attempt at using Avairy's Myna sound editing and recording program was a disaster in my mind. First of all I ran our of time teaching techniques and features. Second, having a class of 18 students all opening their browsers up in http://www.aviary/myna at the same time did not set well with that site's server. It slammed to a crawl. Lastly, after the students signed up for their Podbean.com account to post their podcasts we were again "yellow-lighted" waiting for everyone to get their verification email sent to their university email accounts. So I ended that lesson on the note of, "okay class you have your assignment which is due next week...do the best you can with it." Needless to say I had a lot of emails with lots of questions on how to's. I decided to reclaim my reputation as an easy to understand professor and chose to reteach the class and answer questions of course I gave them an extension on the assignment.
Lo and behold the second go round was a success. Many of the students had attempted the procedures before the second class anyway and to my surprise came back with comments like, "it was not that bad" and it was easier than I thought", and my favorite, "your instructions were great". I re-taught the podcasting lesson again anyway and this time everything went well.
In my future classes and workshops on podcasting I will be using Aviary and Podbean together to teach the last three steps of the Podcast Production process; Recording, Post Production, and Publishing. I titled my Emerging Technology Lesson Plan, Podcasting Made Easier Than You Thought.
Bill, as always I am a big fan. I enjoyed learning a little about Avairy and Podbean and I plan to check it out. You always inspire to keep pushing myself to learn new things and I love that your lesson was music based.
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