This entry was updated 22 February, 4pm.
Note: If you have a pair of headphones or earphones that can plug into a computer, please bring them to our Thursday meeting. You will want them for dealing with audio. (A microphone might be handy, too.)
At this point there are three working groups, each of which has chosen a CMS platform and should by now have access to that platform. The groups so far are:
- Zarifa, Shodiyor, Kamila, and Saleh using Drupal for their CA Journalists project;
- Aiman and Assel using WordPress for their Grad Student site project;
- Noor, Denis, Sasha, Alina, Mina, and Madina I using WordPress for their undergrad community site project
I believe Madina A. is interested in doing a site on women’s issues, perhaps using WordPress.
From here on out your focus should be on developing your project. Planning and revising planning is an ongoing process. Be sure you make a plan that includes specific details on who does what and when, and post the plan as a static page and let me know where you have placed it. Each individual participant should keep track of everything he/she does for the project, both for purposes of work process and for documenting what you have done.
On Thursday I will introduce some audio tools, basic CSS and check in with groups.
Because we will have three weeks without class, all members of each group must meet with me at least once sometime between 8 March and 24 March. (That’s one meeting for each group, with all members present.) Please check your schedules and work out a mutually manageable time with me. If you want to meet in a computer lab, we should try to determine a time right away in order to reserve lab time if possible.
We will work on audio with Audacity, an open source audio program I have had installed in the lab. Audacity user manuals, FAQ and tutorials are all linked through this site. We will do Dan Eliot’s tutorial in class, and perhaps others depending upon how things go.
Audacity is a useful tool for working with any audio, but for our purposes podcasting is the probably the most relevant. For journalists, the internet can be used as a delivery platform for audio reports (an alternative to radio) or for supplementing text and photos with interviews, audio capture, and so on. Posting (or netcasting) audio files in blog entries on a site publishing an RSS feed (remember Bloglines?) creates a podcast the audience can use for easy access to files that can be downloaded to a computer or an iPod (hence the name podcasting) for later listening. (Some also offer streaming audio.)
A few resources relevant to our groups:
- WordPress has a podcasting plug-in and other audio plug-ins also;
- Drupal’s media modules category lists a few audio tools, and a search of the Drupal site reveals a variety of information about podcasting with Drupal;
- Wikipedia’s podcast entry gives a good overview and useful links, including some to podcast search engines.
- The J-Learning site has a few articles about online audio;
- And again, Global Radio News is one example of using sound files in online journalism;
- And Mindy McAdams recently published a tutorial on setting up an audio player that will allow users to listen to audio simply by clicking a link in the entry.
Of course there are limitations to audio online, and here at KIMEP we feel those limits directly. Audio files can be very large (though not always). Here our computer system generally prevents users from uploading or downloading audio files. But there are still ways for us to access audio and you should still consider whether using audio is something you would like to try on your site.
