A short story about the Podcasting session
The beginning
The idea of offering this session was born after finishing a webcasting course with José Rodríguez and Pilar Soro Mateos, two teachers based in two different continents with a common goal: Making the teaching world much better. José in the USA and Pilar in Spain join forces in Puentes al Mundo to provide teachers an online channel for communication and teaching practice exchange. As good ICT fans, Miguel Mendoza, Dafne González and I, active members of Avealmec (the Venezuelan CALL Association), decided to take a Webcasting course that José and Pilar were offering last year. The course was so exciting and interesting that we thought it would be a good idea to share all what we had learned. What a better space than EVO? We sent our proposal to the EVO team and it was accepted. As all EVO sessions' co-moderators, we took the training course and starting planning the session, set up all units, syllabus, and created some of the artifacts to be used. The session fulfilled all the requirements and we were ready to start.
How we started
January 2011 arrived and we started the session full of enthusiasm and expectations. We welcomed all participants in the Yahoo Group and created a weekly activity blog where they would find and follow all session tasks. It was a great experience working with blogs again. Mike and I had previously offered a Blog-based lesson and e-portfolios EVO session in 2009, and the experience was excellent; so we decided to repeat it here. This time, we added glogs. It was wonderful!!! More than expected.
During the session
It was a very intensive work. Each week, we had Skype meetings to plan the activities and work on Google docs bringing ideas and drafts to life. We were connected every single day. Due to the time differences between los Angeles and Caracas, we had to deliver some tasks. It was a great team. We shared all ideas and opinions, and planned the session activities together.
Curious but real
Typical from Murphy's laws, I started facing problems with my computer audio (not a very good deal having started a podcasting session, uh?); so, I couldn't help with the tutorials as planned. That made feel like a bug without a leg. Fortunately, Mike, who's willing to help, did his very best to create tutorials for every single task. Wonderful job, indeed!!! José helped us a lot with Mac questions, Audacity tutorials and brilliant ideas for tasks and resources. I was behind the scenes helping with all what I could. :D
The session end
We designed a Podcasting Fair for participants to exhibit their podcasting work. They've shown a great talent for blogging and podcasting. We are very excited about it. It will be on Ustream and will have Jeff Lebov, the super webcaster with us. Isn't it wonderful???
Well, just to share a little bit of our first audios, here is a Voxopop image which takes you to the actual Voxopop site where particpants recorded their expectations about the Podcasting session. Enjoy it!
