Journal 4

Article: “From Toy to Tool”, by Liz Kolb from Learning and Leading with Technology from iste.org February 2007.

In this article the author explains that it is easy to add audio to a blog and tells us about educational uses for this technology. The technology is very convenient because one can uses his or her cell phone to record anywhere any time without any other equipment. There are complete instructions in the article for attaching audio to a blog beginning with getting an account on Gabcast. So being the intrepid blogging journalist that I am I followed the instructions.

Question 1: How did you add the audioblog to be automatically added to your blog by Gabcast?

After signing up I followed the link in the email verification Gabcast sent me, I proceeded to create a channel. Think of a channel as a connection between any phone you use and your blog. That is, if you set it up right. On my first attempt to set up a channel, I entered the title, description, channel password, and keywords (teaching, technology). I didn’t check the box that it would be explicit content. I’ll try to restrain myself… ;-) I left the Channel Website empty, not knowing what it was for. I pushed the button to use my Google blogger account and then it let me log in to my blogger account so it could read my blog ID number. Then I submitted that channel information.

Question 2: What happened after you called in your audioblog?

Next, I used my cell phone to call the audioblog phone number for the U.S. After I recorded my message and chose option 2 to publish it I waited eagerly for the posting to my blog but it never came. Later I added 2 fields I had left blank on the first try: the optional web site, which is the xxxxx.blogspot.com address, and I checked the box to Add Flash Component to the text blog. The next time I called, it automatically added it to my blog.

But when I was experimenting before I got the automatic publishing to work I tried the manual methods for adding the entry to your blog. When you are in Manage my Published Episodes there is an icon for HTML code that you can cut and pasted into the HTML editor on your blog posting screen to add a button to play your audio file into your blog manually. Of course, the goal of all this is to place a button in your blog that a reader can click on to hear your audio. The service leaves both a link and a flash media audio button for you to click on. Clicking on the icon is much better because it doesn’t have to open up another window or tab to play the audio. In fact the little flash media component shows the status of the music player without any distracting new windows or tabs. The posting that Gabcast made to my blog is just below: