Answer: Educaster is a new feature in Educator (in Beta as of April 1, 2006) that lets users record an audio or video into their Educator account. No special equipment is needed other than an ordinary sound input (and web camera for video). Once an audio or video is recorded, it can be easily embedded into ANY part of Educator, and even delivered as a Podcast.
Question: What software is needed to use Educaster?
Answer: The user's browser must have the Flash Player, Version 7 or later, to use Educaster.
Answer: Educaster is turned on by course. The course instructor has to activate Educaster by going to their "Toolbox" icon in a particular course and then clicking "audio/video controls".
Question: What does it look like? Answer: Once Educaster is turned on for a particular course, each text box in that course will have two icons, "Add Audio" and "Add Video".
Question: Can I see how it works? Answer: Below is a brief tutorial of how the audio record portion of Educaster works. The video record portion works the same way:
Question: How long can a recording be? Answer: Currently, audio recordings can be 2 minutes in length, and video recordings can be 30 seconds in length. There are plans to make audio recordings up to 15 minutes in length and video recordings 5 minutes in length in the near future. Updated 04/04/06 8:25 a.m.: Audio recordings can now be 12 minutes in length, video recordings can now be 3 minutes in length. Question: What kind of Internet connection is needed to use Educaster? Answer: Educaster has been built to work over fast and slow connections alike. While you may experience some difficulty playing and recording video over a dial-up connection, audio recording and playing should work just fine over standard dial-up modems. Question: How can a recording be inserted into Educator? Answer: Once a recording is saved, when it is clicked on from the "My sounds" or "My videos" list, the "Make link" button can be clicked on to embed the audio or video into the active text box.
When a sound is embedded into Educator, the viewer sees a dialogue similar to the following:
Question: How is a recording made into a Podcast or a Vodcast? Answer: When the "Make Podcast" (or "Make Vodcast" for videos) checkbox is checked for a saved audio or video, the sound will become available as part of your Podcast (see below). The icon next to the audio or video in your "My sounds" or "My videos" list will turn into an iPod icon. Question: How can people access my Podcasts or Vodcasts? Answer: In order for someone to access your Podcast, they need the following: Within iTunes, from the menu bar, choose "Advanced", and then "Subscribe to Podcast". The subscription URL will be: http://podcasting.ucompass.com/subscribe?publisher= So for instance, if your username is jsmith@educator.myschool.edu, your Podcasting subscription URL will be: http://podcasting.ucompass.com/subscribe?publisher=jsmith@educator.myschool.edu iTunes will then ask you for a username and password. The username the user subscribing to your Podcast must enter should be in the form of
their own Educator login as Once the username and password are accepted, the Podcasts will download to iTunes and you can then sync the Podcast onto your iPod or other mobile media device.
© Ucompass.com, Inc. 2007
|
