Week 11- Testing 1,2,3

Wow, week 11 already!? Only one more week of school to go – I actually cannot believe how quickly this semester has flown by.

This week’s task was to explore creative tools and to create a podcast (you can find my podcast, which is a quick little clip on my thoughts on being a digital citizen, located at the top of my blog – also check out this introductory CNN video on podcasting). In order to create my podcast the tools I looked into were RecordMP3, SoundCloud and Garageband. The tool I settled on using for my podcast was SoundCloud because although RecordMP3 and Garageband were quite straightforward to use, I could not seem to figure out how to get a link from RecordMP3 to embed into my blog (the recording would only download to your computer) and the Garageband file was too large to upload and go through SoundCloud.

I also ran into an issue with SoundCloud itself. As a Mac user I of course tried this tool out using my Safari browser. I could record my video, but SoundCloud would keep telling me that my podcast was “processing.” Once I switched to using Google Chrome, everything worked perfectly!

I think being able to produce audio sound clips through things such as podcasts is a very powerful thing. Sometimes it's a much more effective way to get something across – to allow others to hear the sound of an actual voice rather than read written words. This is the beauty of digital literacy. Of course, as always, digital responsibility is an important factor when it comes to podcasts. We must always remember to be responsible digital citizens when creating content for the digital world.

SoundCloud was pretty straightforward and easy to use, but quite honestly, I don’t really see this being something I will use on a regular basis, so I’m not going to add it to my PLE. With that being said, I did really enjoy the opportunity to understand what SoundCloud is all about – I’ve heard about it from others but did not realize it allowed you to upload or create your own recordings.

This week I also created a Creative Commons license for my blog! I think this is a really cool feature to add to my blog given that throughout this semester, I have been using photos I have either taken or created myself (ironically up until this very blog post). By creating my Creative Commons license I was able to choose if and how I would like my photos to be used by others and things like whether or not my photos can be used for commercial use (I chose no for this option).

https://www.flickr.com/photos/dediquetic/16156539025

This week’s interesting Feedly find…

This week I found a fun little post since it is finally spring!! One of my favourite spring time flowers are cherry blossoms and apparently the cherry blossoms in Washington, D.C. have bloomed a week early making all of Washington's monuments look extra pretty. There’s nothing I love more than when the ones infront of the tower at Brock finally come into season! Check out this short little article with some awesome pictures from Washington to get a little taste of warmer weather!

https://www.flickr.com/photos/wonderlane/3264276465