Paul+Harrington-+Wales

Croeso i'r Gymru - Welcome to Wales A Podcasters Tale! ( with apologies to G. Chaucer)

A brief biography of where I am with Web 2.0 technology and how I came to be here : I have been a Primary (Elementary) Teacher at my school [|Cefn Fforest Primary] for 19 years having taught right across the age range - from 7 to 11. About 19 months ago I began to see the possibilty of giving my pupils a wider (global) voice, and giving them a 'real' audience as an important thing for me to look into. I began by downloading probably the most important single piece of software ( freeware ) that I have ever found - [|Audacity] and its[| MP3 Encoder]. My only problem for about 4 months was that I had no idea how to upload my audio files to the internet, as I didn't understand how the RSS Code for each podcast could be used!!! ( you see a beginner). I used Audacity myself in the first instance to ensure that I knew how to use it before showing it to pupils ( in retrospect I should probably/ and would if i had to do this again, share this with my pupils earlier. It wasn't until I stumbled across a number of Podcast hosting sites like [|Feedburner] and [|Podomatic] ( other very good podcast host sites would be [|Odeo], [|Jellycast] and for video [|BlipTV] and [|TeacherTube] )that it began to dawn on me that this wasn't as difficult as I first thought. In fact uploading a podcast onto Podomatic is basically as easy as a bit of word processing and finding the audio file on your computer and clicking upload. We were off and running - I began with the notion of creating a Podcast Radioshow Format and indeed our early podcasts were along these lines at [|Cefn Fforest FM Podcasts]. However our podcasting journey has taken us much more into the realm of giving our friends ( link schools around the world ) a [|window into our small corner of Wales]. Fab Podcast Directory is at [|Recap] ( educational podcasts under 5's, 5-11yrs, 11+yrs and College Podcasts) Some friends that we have met through our podcasting : [|Allanah King] in Appleby School, Nelson New Zealand [|Jane Nicholls] Pine Hill School, Dunedin, New Zealand [|Kathy Shields] Little Voices Kindergarten Podcasts Georgia US http://mr_h.podomatic.com/ A Storyteller from Texas US

High School Podcasts of note : Chris Fuller's (UK)[| Spanish Podcast], Joe Dale's [|French Podcasts] (using [|Voki]), [|Colegio Internacional de Caracas (CIC) Podcasts] podcasts( Neudis Abreu on Art )at [|recap.ltd.uk] , Sandia Prep Radio [|International Podcasts] from Albuquerque, New Mexico, A further source of Educational podcasts across all age ranges is on iTunes Podcast Directory - search Education - K-12. As a last word there is no way that my pupils would have a readership of their work that they do without our podcasting and [|class],(978 views) [|personal blogs] (2825 views )- No longer is their work just written for me or their parents - **The World reads it as well. **