Chris Shamburg

NECC 2009 Went Very Well

I gave a presentation with Kate (my wife) entitled Literacy and DIY Audio Drama: The Next Generation of Podcasting. We focused on using audio drama to teach literacy skills.

Here’s a link to the presentation

And here is a file with the handouts Handouts

Resources for Audio / PBS Webinar

If you want more info after the PBS Webinar, Remixing Shakespeare, you might want to look at the following resources.

Remixing Shakespeare–Tutorial with a video on creating audio plays with students from the Folger Shakespeare Library that focuses on Macbeth and foley techniques.

Cinna the Audio Play–Project with resources (including audio clips) and directions for students to make an audio play from a scene from Julius Caesar.

Podcourse–The fully online high school English course focusing on student podcasting. See examples and projects here..projects include historic interviews, audio plays, and student-created audio tours. This course was taught through NJeSchool, the largest online public high school in New Jersey.

National Educational Technology Standards for Students: Units for the English Language Arts (2008)–My ISTE book about technology and teaching English.

Online Graduate Program in Educational Technology–Fully online program in Educational Technology @ New Jersey City University. Special Summer Course Offering, Special Topics: Podcasting in Education.

Ideas for Foley Sound Effects

Marching army: boots on hard surface (repeated and looped)
Shovels: spoons in cups of sand or pebbles (change the pitch or speed)
Applause: 2–3 people clapping (repeated and looped)
Knocking on door: knocking on desk or wood
Time bomb ticking: clock ticking
Airplane engine: fan starting and running
Helicopter: opening and closing an umbrella very fast
Bones breaking: cracking celery or carrots
Knight moving in armor: set of keys jingling
Walking in snow: patting corn starch
Dinosaur, monster, or large animal eating: chewing watermelon or apple
Door, gate or elevator door closing: closing a desk drawer or filing cabinet
Boiling water: blowing bubbles in water with straw

School Year 08-09

The school year is beginning, and I’ve got some exciting graduate courses–Introduction to Authoring Tools, Technology in the English Language Arts, and Research in Educational Technology.

I’ve been doing a lot of research and reading for the Authoring Tools course, especially in DIY ethic and philosophy, so I’m excited to be teaching it now. This research has taken me to some diverse yet connected places–the Whole Earth Catalog from the 1960s, Buckminster Fuller, the Arts and Crafts Movement, new ways to edit and remix YouTube videos (see my DIY delicious links). There’s a powerful theme running through all of these ideas that I’m going to try to articulate.

The Technology in the ELA course is like coming home. I wrote my NETS: Units for the English Language Arts from material I used as the textbook for that course, so it’s very rewarding to see it used for the class.

My research students are brainstorming some interesting project ideas now–podcasting, crowdsourcing, assessment in learner-centered classrooms, and the mindsets of new literacies are just a few of the topics.

Over the summer I submitted the manuscript of my next book, tentatively titled Student-Powered Podcasting to ISTE. I also wrote a chapter on Podcasting for a book on DIY media, edited by my new literacies heroes Colin Lankshear and Michele Knobel, and a chapter for a wiki on New Literacies (http://www.newlits.org/). The other contributors to the wiki are very impressive, and I’m honored to be included with them.

Thanks for emails and comments asking me about updates to the blog…I’ll try to a better blogger.

NECC 08

Getting ready for NECC in San Antonio. I’ll be giving two presentations. Both are based on the work I am doing with NJeSchool and Podcourse.

Student Podcasts as the Curriculum: A New Paradigm (Lecture)
Tuesday, 7/1/2008, 11:00am–12:00pm; HGCC 102 A
Blog Tag: n08s408

Become a Free and Legal Podcaster in 55 Minutes (BYOL Session)
Wednesday, 7/2/2008, 8:30am–9:30am; Grand Hyatt Lone Star Ballroom A
Blog Tag: n08s509

Attached are all of the handouts.
All Handouts for NECC 2008 Revised

Teaching Material

Below are documents and media that might be helpful to other teachers.

Here’s some media from Podcourse and other podcasting projects.
Help! My Microphone Isn’t Working–This is a short video to troubleshoot common problems when beginning audio recording and editing on your computer.

Turning an MP3 into a Bona Fide Podcast–Here’s a short presentation for using free tools to make your mp3 into a podcast. It’s just one way to do it…please take the liberty to adapt this method to your needs.

Saving as an MP3 in Audacity–This is a short video explaining the differences between the Audacity aup file and the mp3–a common confusion when first using Audacity.

Editing Seedwiki–I use Seedwiki for my Fair Use in Education Wiki Project. The purpose of the wiki is to share scenarios for the educational applications of fair use and of copyleft materials. This video is a short introduction to editing the site.

Here is a link to the Audacity Tutorial 2008. It’s a hands-on activity that gives step-by-step instructions for the major features of multitrack audio editing with Audacity 1.2.6.

Here’s a video I made to Introduce Microsoft’s PhotoStory.

One unit in my new Book on Podcasting will be called “Readers Theater–The Sequel”. Students will use scripts and sound effects to create audio plays in the spirit or Readers Theater. Below is an example from one student in Podcourse.
Grimm Story

Below is an example of the Primary Source Project. Here two primary sources were mixed–a reading of Lou Gehrig’s farewell speech from 1939 and a recording from a radio broadcast of Gehrig at bat in the 1936 World Series.

Primary Source–Baseball and Lou Gehrig

Here’s an example of the Poetry Walk Remix: Nature (the City Remix is here)

Poetry Walk Remix Nature

NETS Book and a New Look at Standards

My NETS-S Book came in the mail yesterday, and I have to say that I’m very psyched. There are a few chapters that I’d like to amplify and have plans to expand on. I’m writing a book that extends the podcourse chapter (will do a lot of posting here about that). This book will be based on the HS English Course Podcasting and Creative Audio that I’ve been teaching at NJeSchool for the last two years. I’m also writing a HS curriculum (and will hopefully be teaching in Summer) for a course on fanfiction which will expand on the fanfiction chapter (preordered Rebecca Black’s Adolescents and Online Fan Fiction…want to read it ASAP). I’m also working with some graduate students on research projects in these areas (one will be contributing to the upcoming podcasting book).

The one chapter that I’ve been giving the most thought to is the introductory chapter on standards. My first few drafts of that chapter were the obligatory descriptions and lists of the NCTE/IRA Standards and the NETS-S Standards. I wasn’t entirely happy with mailing it in like that, so I started to do a lot of reading about standards–much of it written during the early 1990s when the standards movement was really taking shape.

What I found were some compelling cautionary ideas about standards that gelled with my experiences with teachers and teacher educators. In a way, I had dismissed antistandards folks as either crunchy low-expectation types or provincial states’ righters, but an unintentional (?) consequence of the standards movement is that teachers and teacher educators are asked to abdicate their responsibilities to be creative, innovative, and reflective. The authority of standards often come without adequate explanations (who wrote these things and how did they get here?) and discourage reflection and innovation. I’ve never heard a teacher educator or administrator ask teachers when they would modify, change, or disagree with a standard. This is especially ironic when you consider that most colleges of education have the word ‘reflective’ in their mission statements.

I know that most organizations solicit input, but this really has seemed perfunctory and limited to me. I’m going to try to do more on this with my graduate students…maybe start a standards’ wiki and see what happens. I do think standards can help map out the boundaries of a discipline, but a conversation about these markers or rallying points should be part of the standards experience (and there should be more transparency in their development). I did try to capture this spirit throughout the book, and I’m looking forward to continuing with this idea.

Pocasting Class

I’ve just begun another cycle of Podcourse
Along with the projects, there are also be quizzes and required online discussions.

Podcasting Narratives
1. Audio Drama (and Audacity Tutorial for students who didn’t do it previously)
2. Fictional Dramatization.
3. FanFiction Dramatization
4. Character Interviews.
5. Shakespeare Remixed

Podcasting and Nonfiction

6. Dramatic Readings of Primary Sources
7. Poetry Walk Remix
8. Director’s Cut DVD
9.The History of a High School/History of a Neighborhood
10. Audio Essay (ala YouthRadio)
11. Journalism Report

Projects

These are initiatives and projects that I think are especially interesting.

Student-Powered Podcasting: Teaching for 21st Century Literacy. New ISTE book about student-generated podcasts. Coming out in Oct. 09.

Podcasting and Creative Audio–This is a fully online high school English class that I am teaching for NJeSchool, New Jersey’s largest online public high school. It’s an English class based on student created podcasts. The biggest influences on the course are trends in authentic learning and language arts, developmental models of writing and research and theory on new literacies, participatory media, and convergence culture.

National Educational Technology Standards for Students: Units for the English Language Arts–This is my new book. It covers the theoretical, educational, and ethical issues of using technology in the English Language Arts and gives 12 detailed units for technology in the ELA. Here’s the Amazon Link

Research Wiki–Started this wiki for my research class…please feel free to read and contribute.

Folger Shakespeare Library, Shakespeare Set Free–I’ve been a national workshop leader and consultant for the Folger Shakespeare Library’s Education Department for several years (I went to their summer institute in 1994 and they couldn’t get rid of me).

Folger Shakespeare Library’s Remixing Shakespeare Video Podcast–Besides developing and giving their workshops, I’ve consulted and starred in their pilot podcast project. The video podcast that I worked on is an innovative twist to podcasting. We demonstrate and then give the tools and resources for students to do multitrack audio editing for audio plays of Shakespeare. It merges trends in DIY media and performance based approaches to teaching Shakespeare.

Teaching and Fair Use Wiki–this is a project I started in one of my graduate courses a few years ago and it’s blossomed. Students write scenarios in which teachers can successfully invoke fair use. The project and wiki were formerly focused on ambiguous cases of copyright law in education, but switched focus to encourage teachers to think about and use fair use more.

About

I am an Associate Professor in the Graduate Program in Educational Technology at New Jersey City University, where I have been working since 2001. Before teaching college, I taught high school English at the Hudson County Schools of Technology in Jersey City for ten years. As a classroom teacher I won several awards for my teaching—including Teacher of the Year, the Governor’s Award for Outstanding Teaching, and the Geraldine R. Dodge Award for Teacher of Humanities. I have consulted for educational organizations, universities, online programs, and school districts as a curriculum consultant, workshop leader, and external evaluator for grants.

I have my BA and MA in English Literature from Rutgers and my Doctorate in Instructional Technology and Media from Teachers College, Columbia University. I’ve written numerous articles and give presentations on educational technology. I am coauthor of the book Teachers as Technology Leaders (ISTE, 2006) and author of National Educational Technology Standards for Students: Units for the English Language Arts (ISTE, 2008).

Chris Shamburg

Just switched Webhosting from iPower to Yahoo. Will be updating site frequently.