Please note that I’ve only been able to test these on the VGA input on a TV, rather than on a projector. I’m not 100% sure if this affects the findings but I would imagine that the image displayed on the TV through the VGA connection will be similar to that displayed on a VGA projector. In each case I’ve tried setting the resolution of the Apple TV at 1024×768 60Hz which I believe is the native resolution of the iPad. With solution 3 it defaulted to 720p 60Hz.

Solution 1 [FAIL]

Product: HDMI Male to VGA+3RCA Male Gold Plated 1.5m Cable
Price: £4.99

I wasn’t at all convinced that this cable would work: I figured that the HDMI signal from the Apple TV was a digital signal and that a passive cable wouldn’t be able to convert the digital signal to an analog signal. Having tried various options on the Apple TV settings I wasn’t able to get the cable to work at all, so this will be going back to Amazon!

Solution 2 [SUCCESS]

Product: Konig HDMI to VGA Converter Price: £46.00

This active box has an HDMI input and outputs the video to VGA and the audio to twin RCA sockets. It’s a powered box so you’d need to take that on board when planning power sockets at the presentation lectern or wherever your projector is located. The fact that the cables come out both sides of the box mean that it’s a bit of a “messy” solution, but nonetheless it seems to work well. A photo of the output can be seen below:

Note that the image is off-centre. The Apple TV display takes up the full screen, but something seems to happen when the 4×3 image of the iPad comes through AirPlay. I’ve had the same problem with Solution 4 which I used live with a projector at the conferences this week, so there must be some issue which prevents any of these boxes properly aligning the image on the screen.

Solution 3 [SUCCESS]

Product: High Quality HDMI to VGA L/R YPbPr SPDIF Sink Component Optical Audio RCA Video Converter Adapter Monitor Projector HDTV (!!)
Price: £42.25

As you can see from the image, this box is a bit “tidier” than the Konig: all the connections are at the rear. In addition to VGA and 2x RCA outputs, this converter also offers optical audio (SPDIF), although you could take that straight from the Apple TV itself. It also has a component out option (YPbPr) and I’ve included a photo of that output below in addition to the VGA.

The image above is the VGA output. Again, notice a slight misalignment in that the image is not centred on the screen. It’s less pronounced than with the Konig, though.

The image above is using the Component out. It’s a bit crisper, but I suppose component options are less likely on standard projectors in schools. I have seem some schools with wall plates for VGA + audio etc., and some of these have component options, so it’s maybe worth considering.

Solution 4 [SUCCESS]

Products: HP HDMI to VGA Display Adapter and LINDY SPDIF Digital to Analogue Stereo Audio Converter
Price: £52.74 + £39.99 = £92.73

This is the only option I’ve used “in the real world” as it was the only one delivered before my conference last Friday. The HP adapter feels quite substantial – and more of a “professional” product than the converter boxes above. However, there are no screw holes for the VGA cable and it did have a tendency to disconnect, eg. when I lifted up the Apple TV to show how AirPlay was working. Note that the HP adapter does not require external power. The other issue is that the HP adapter is video only, so a secondary solution for the audio has to be found. Since the Apple TV only has digital audio out, I had to get a digital to analogue converter. I went for the Lindy box as you can see in the photo. No complaints with this: I connected an SPDIF cable (not supplied, so a further expense) to the Apple TV and the Lindy box converts this to analogue sound through twin RCAs. There’s also an option to use optical coax instead.

The output of this solution worked well, after playing around a bit with projector settings. It can be seen below – again it’s a bit off-centre.

Conclusions

So which solution seems to be the best? I think probably solution 3 is the least messy and provides the most connectivity options, but I’ve yet to try this in the real world. I’ll probably have the chance to do that this week so I’ll keep you posted on my findings! I hope that you’ve found this useful and please add any solutions you’ve found in the comments!

Seven useful tips for creating enhanced podcasts in GarageBand and Keynote

The first five of these tips are very general and apply to any teacher creating podcasts. The final two tips are a bit more techy and refer specifically to creating artwork in Keynote with a view to adding it to GarageBand to create an enhanced podcast.

1. Always start your podcast with the title and episode number or date. Remember that your learners may not have an mp3 player with a screen, so they’d rather hear the podcast title than a lengthy jingle before they know they’re listening to the right episode! A clear, announcement, eg. “French Verbs Revision Podcast, episode 3″ before any music or jingle will help your podcast sound more professional.
2. Think more “late night radio voice” than “teacher voice”. As teachers we’re used to addressing a whole class using our “teacher voices”. However, it’s likely that your learners will be listening to the podcast on headphones or earbuds, so you need to change your voice accordingly.
3. Teach one learner, not a whole class. The listening experience will be improved if you imagine one learner rather than teaching to a whole class. If you can’t think of one learner, think of explaining a concept to a son, daughter, niece or nephew! This will change the quality of your voice and your intonation.
4. Short and sweet and often is best. It’s often best thinking of a podcast as a review of one piece of learning which you have perhaps covered in class. If a podcast lasts five minutes and covers one concept or topic in an interesting way, ideally with an example or two, then it’s more likely that you’ll engage your learners and that they will listen – and perhaps even listen again!
5. Silence is golden. Leave thinking time for your learners. Ask them questions, give them thinking time and then work through the answers with them.
6. Try to use a square image for your artwork. You can create square slides in Keynote by going to the Document tab in the Inspector and choosing “custom slide size” from the drop-down menu. An appropriate slide size is 600×600 pixels. GarageBand is set to use square slides by default, so if you’ve made your artwork square this will work well.
7. Think carefully about font sizes. If you’re using text on screen, think carefully about the font size you use: your learners will probably be viewing the podcast on a small screen so don’t use small fonts, and keep the words on screen to a minimum. It’s better to have two or three words in 96 point text than a full sentence in 18 point text!

A word of explanation on our group’s name, GC/DC: to keep things simple we chose a song with very few chords – and “I’m a believer” fitted the requirements: G, C, D and a couple of Fs thrown in. So it seemed only right to name our band GC/DC!

First of all, I run the Radio Lingua Network of language-learning podcasts, and our educational branch is called Radio Lingua Schools. On our Radio Lingua Schools website you can read about all the digital creativity workshops we run, working in the field of languages in primary and secondary schools up and down the country.

Introductory Discussion

I spoke about Twitter – sign up for your own Twitter account at http://twitter.com and you can then start following me – @markpentleton – and all the other MFL Twitterati I mentioned via Joe Dale’s MFL Twitterers group.

I also mentioned Wallwisher where you can “build a wall” and have your students post their homework as graffiti on the wall. You can read more about Simon Howell’s use of Wallwisher within MFL and there are more details of Helena Butterfield’s work here.

Another technology we had a brief look at was Voicethread which is a tool for talking about and sharing images, documents and videos. Jo Rhys-Jones has discussed various ways of using Voicethread in primary MFL here.

Fiona Joyce has created a wiki for MFL teachers using Storybird and Lisa Stevens has some examples on her site, including video versions of the Storybird stories she has created.

I suggested that using Google Maps, and specifically Street View is an excellent way of bringing the foreign culture into the classroom. It’s worth using http://maps.google.fr rather than the English language version, so that the interface is also in French. Google Maps and Street View are particularly useful for talking about the town, working with prepositions (eg. next to, opposite, etc.) and for practising giving directions. In addition, using “real” shops and services, street signs and even adverts and notices can bring added authenticity to a lesson.

Creating content

I showed examples of animations and film-making projects. Useful software links include:

• Kudlian’s I Can Animate
• Boinx iStop Motion
• Windows Moviemaker
• Audacity
• GarageBand

The two podcast hosting services I mentioned were Podomatic and Libsyn.

For further information on making podcasts and using the apps mentioned, see these previous posts:

• Making use of free educational content for mobile devices
• Effective language-learning through creative technologies

You may also be interested in our Creative Classroom series of tutorials and screencasts from CrunchEd Productions.

iPod Touch Project for Gateshead Schools

Peter has asked me to remind you that if you want to be part of the MFL iPod Touch project then please email him at p.haywood [at] hgclc.org.

Background

I run the Radio Lingua Network (website | iTunes link) of language-learning podcasts, and our education branch website can be found at radiolinguaschools.com.

iTunes

iTunes is a tool which allows you to organise your digital content: music, audio files, movies, tv shows, podcasts and much more. It can be downloaded free from the Apple website and is available for both Mac and PC. It comes bundled on all Macs and on many HP and Dell PCs. Anyone who has an iPod, iPhone or iPad must have iTunes, so there are millions of copies of iTunes worldwide, and many of your students will be very familiar with iTunes.

iTunes Store – Podcasts

In addition to allowing you to organise your own content, iTunes lets you access content from around the web, and around the world. Click on the iTunes Store link in the left hand menu of iTunes to access music, movies, tv shows, etc. This content is available for purchase, but the iTunes Store also offers three main areas of free content which are of huge interest to educators:

• iTunes Podcasts
• iTunes U
• the App Store

Examples of podcasts used are:

• Coffee Break French
• News Time Spanish
• Mr Allsop’s GCSE History Podcast

iTunes U

While the range of materials available within the iTunes Podcasts area can be daunting and at times difficult to filter, iTunes U provides an area of content categorised by subject and organised by institution which has already gone through a quality assurance process. Examples quoted include:

• Open University Exploring Sports
• Birmingham City University
• MOMA
• HTMi: How to open a white wine

iPod Touch / iPhone apps

Time does not allow for a thorough demonstration of iPod Touch and iPhone apps. However, the following apps were mentioned:

• Dress up and make up (£1.19)
• Make a Martian (free)
• Decibel Meter (£1.19)
• Coastermate / XSensor (free)
• iRevise (£1.19)
• iStudiez Pro (£1.79)

iPad apps

I discussed various ways of using the iPad bundled apps in the classroom. Links for third party apps and content I mentioned can be found below:

• Walk Talk and Learn French podcast
• iWork for iPad (Apple website)
• Pages – Word processing (£5.99)
• Keynote – Presentations (£5.99)
• Numbers – Spreadsheets (£5.99)
• Omnigraffle – planning, mindmapping (£29.99)
• National Geographic Atlas (£1.19)
• The Guardian Eyewitness Photos (free)
• TypeDrawing – (£1.79)
• Pianist Pro - (£5.99)
• Korg iElectribe – (£5.99)
• forScore – (£2.99)
• Vuvuzela – (free)

Other resources

The Creative Classroom – a series of video podcasts produced by Apple Distinguished Educators including episodes on creating content for mobile devices.

iPad in Education – a new website created by ADE Ian Wilson looking at using the iPad in classrooms.

iPods in Essa Academy – Times online article about Abdul Chohan’s introduction of 1:1 iPods in his school.

Mobl21.com – Create mobile learning content quickly and easily, and serve it on your students’ devices

I believe that GarageBand, part of the iLife suite of applications, is extremely useful in classrooms as a tool for providing rhythm to help learners repeat words, phrases, equations, formulae, etc. and I demonstrated this to the assembled delegates by teaching them some Zulu. Having visited South Africa for the first time last month I picked up a few phrases (which may find themselves included in a future podcast series…) in Zulu and I decided that I’d begin by teaching the word sanibonani, which is how you say “hello” to a group of people. I wanted to get in one of the lovely click sounds of Zulu, so I also taught the phrase ngisaqala ukufunda isiZulu – “I’m learning Zulu”.

The Voices and World Music jam packs for GarageBand provide some fantastic African sounds, so I prepared a backing track using some loops and a simple melody based on the two phrases. I then got everyone repeating the sounds, using the African rhythms as a background. We split up the audience, giving one half the tricky ngisaqala, the other half ukufunda, and then everyone said isiZulu together. Finally, I recorded them a couple of times chanting these phrases before putting everything together in GarageBand.

I only had 15 minutes for the entire Keynote, so I didn’t have time to put the final piece together there and then, but the idea was that the recording could then be shared among the learners, further consolidating their learning as they listened on their own iPods etc. To be honest I’d forgotten about the whole project as the rest of the ATI took over, but I remembered about the GarageBand file this morning so I’ve put together a performance using the backing track and the recordings made at ATI and you can have a listen here and let me know what you think!

Ngiyabonga (thanks) to everyone at ATI, and I hope you like it.

Links for this presentation

(Please note that many of these links are iTunes links, so you should have iTunes installed in order for them to work. Download iTunes here.

Coffee Break Spanish
Mr Allsop’s GCSE History Revision
Sinclair Mackenzie’s Higher Fizzics podcasts
iTunes U: MoMA Visual Descriptions
iTunes U: Stanford
iTunes U: Learning and Teaching Scotland
iTunes U: Arizona IDEAL eLearning Platform
App store: Dress up and makeup
App store: Make a martian
App store: Decibel meter
App store: Coaster mate

We started by looking at the excellent "Podcasting in Plain English" video from CommonCraft.com (Catalan-subtitled version here) and discussing what podcasting involves.

Finding and subscribing to podcasts

We then looked at how to find podcasts and subscribe to them either via a web search (including podcast directories such as LearnOutLoud and PodcastDirectory) or through iTunes. The screengrabs below show the steps involved in subscribing to a podcast in iTunes:

Download iTunes here. Remember that it is possible to change the iTunes Store country from the homepage of the iTunes Store. Scroll to the bottom and select the appropriate country. Although you will not be able to purchase music, tv shows or films (unless you have a credit card registered to an address in that country) you will be able to access podcasts within the store.

Creating podcasts

Having learned how to access podcasts, we considered how to create a podcast. The example was given using Apple's Garageband software, but similar results can be achieved with Audacity which can be downloaded free. Two example podcasts were created and uploaded to libsyn. The examples can be downloaded here and here (I hope Joana and Josep don't mind their interviews being featured around the world!) A popular alternative to libsyn with options for free accounts is podomatic.

Why should we be using podcasts in languages education?

Useful links about education podcasting can be found below:

• Teacher José Picardo's wonderful walkthrough, Podcasting in Five Easy Steps
• Teacher Joe Dale's podcasting links 
• Catalan podcast directory 
• Fem un podcast from MediaWiki
• Links to the Radio Lingua site, Coffee Break Spanish and One Minute Catalan 

Ara, en català: com ja he dit, que perdoneu les fallades! Espero que les presentacions hagin estat interessants i útils. Aquest matí, després de la meva presentació he fet un volt per Girona i em va agradar molt. Espero tornar i passar més temps al descobrir la vostra ciutat! Moltes gràcies per haver-me convidat a parlar i fins la propera vegada! 

If it’s not in your DNA then you’re not going to be able to do it
As a podcaster I should be creating podcasts which include ‘parts of me’. If I’m into Sci-Fi, or travel, or Eurovision (!) then I should include these idiosynchrasies in what I do. This makes the podcast more ‘me’, and theoretically that’s what attracts listeners and fans. The key word is authenticity: don’t try to be something you’re not.

I guess this in many ways puts into words exactly what I’ve been doing for two years (and indeed throughout my teaching career): the lessons I teach – and the content I produce – have always included a bit of ‘me’, especially in terms of my music, and indeed the cheesiness of the podcasts sometimes!

Content may well be king, but marketing is queen – and the queen runs the household!
Marketing your brand is the key to success and recognition. Marketing can be both traditional marketing with advertising etc., but it can also mean simply ‘becoming part of the conversation’ by joining discussions, posting on forums and blogs, and becoming a recognised source of opinion or information.

We have done very little ‘marketing’ as such with Coffee Break Spanish, and our other podcasts. Indeed, we haven’t really ‘needed’ to so far in that iTunes drives so much of our traffic and our prominent place on iTunes helps to maintain this. Of course, relying on iTunes or any other one source of traffic can be dangerous. What happens if iTunes stops pushing podcasts? We need to look seriously at the bigger plan for marketing, but that’s not really for this public blog at the moment.

Editing? Screw editing!
Gary doesn’t believe in editing – it slows up the creative process and holds back publishing. Indeed in a recent episode he needed to verify the cost of a bottle of wine he was discussing so he left his place in front of the camera and went to check the price online, leaving the camera running. Apparently his viewers enjoy this because it’s real.

I think there’s definitely a place for this kind of production. However, I’m not 100% sure if it fits into what we’re doing. On the one hand, we can easily produce that kind of ‘live’, raw content, and I’m sure that it would be successful, assuming we had the correct host and the correct location, be it studio or otherwise. However, I think the wider non-tech appeal of language-learning content may mean that our production needs to be higher standard. This needn’t necessarily mean that we go back to the type of Buongiorno Italia production, but perhaps the best solution would be a show which “feels” live, but which is actually produced deliberately to achieve that effect. Perhaps something along the lines of Walk, Talk and Learn!

There were undoubtedly other pieces of wisdom covered by Gary during his presentation, but these were just a few of my thoughts. I’ll add to these once I’ve heard the podcast version of the keynote.

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from New Media Expo. I’d obviously followed previous Expos in Ontario from the various blogs I read, and this year I decided to see what it was all about and experience the Expo for myself. I have to say that overall I’m a bit disappointed in my experience. Perhaps it’s because of where I’m currently at in podcasting and in particular where I’m at in terms of monetisation of my brands. I felt that the content was perhaps aimed more at those who haven’t got as much experience in making their podcasts and brands pay for themselves. While Paul Colligan, Jason Van Orden, Leesa Barnes and co. provided great ideas for podcasters who hope to take their podcasts beyond the hobbyist level, I felt that there wasn’t enough content on how to take that next step.

I spoke to Don McAllister about this and I think that Don’s probably in a similar position: we’ve both achieved success with our respective podcasts, we’ve both efficiently monetised our brands and indeed we’ve both reached a stage where podcasting (and the ancillary activities) is our ‘day job’. And yet the big ‘profitable podcasting’ sessions at the Expo were still saying similar things to what they’ve been saying in the past, addressing that prospective profitable podcaster, rather than providing any advice as to the next steps for those of us who are already successfully monetising our podcasts.

Of course, as Tim Bourquin (and many others) said at the opening of the conference, it’s more about the conversations you have with people in the corridors, in the coffee queues and in the bar which are as important, if not more important, than the sessions, and I’ve had many of these. It has been great getting to know Don (and his family) and putting faces to the many names I’ve been reading and listening to over the past few years. Special mention goes to Jason Van Orden whose presentation was both enjoyable and useful, and who, as I’ve suspected for a long time, is a really nice guy. It was great to meet Jason, his Internet Business Mastery partner Sterling, and indeed Melanie, his wife.

i plan to blog about the sessions I’ve attended, sharing the most important messages, and I’ll probably do this over the next few days. This post is more a “first impressions” of the Expo, rather than anything with too much detail. There are a few things I also have to mention about Las Vegas itself! Quite a city, quite an experience. But more of that in coming blog posts.

Was New Media Expo for me? Was it worthwhile travelling 4000 miles via Iceland, Toronto, Windsor and Detroit to Sin City in order to attend the convention? I think I’ll probably hold off before answering that question, primarily because I still need a few days to think through everything. I’ve enjoyed my trip, but any final decision or comment is coloured at the moment by the fact that I really feel it’s time to get home. I’ve been away for eleven days and that’s more than enough for me. It’s time to go home.

I am also an Apple Distinguished Educator and work with Apple on a number of projects involving creative learning through film, animation, music and podcasting. I’ll be working at the forthcoming Apple Teacher Institute at Cheltenham College, Gloucestershire after Easter and look forward to working with lots of inspiring teachers from across the country.

In my spare time I run Radio Lingua Ltd with my wife Catriona. Radio Lingua Ltd is a new media company providing language-learning by podcast. We currently offer courses in conversational German and Italian and our podcast Coffee Break Spanish is one of the world’s leading Spanish podcasts with in excess of 100,000 listeners per episode. More podcasts to come in the future!

It’s probably fairly obvious that languages play a large part in my life! I speak French, Spanish and Italian and am relatively confident in Norwegian, German, Portuguese and Catalan. I’ve recently been dabbling in Japanese and Mandarin Chinese too, but time doesn’t allow for much more than a dabble!