New to the Exploratorium: BlogAMP.
I thought that finding a Web. 2.0 tool that would have relevance to my classes and my students, who already use a good deal of specialized technology, would be difficult. Let me back up for a moment. I teach college courses in Radio and Audio Production. A great deal of the content of these courses relies on technology and special equipment that works with sound. My students are constantly recording and creating new material whether it’s practicing an on-air radio technique in my Intro to Radio class or producing a project in my Digital Audio Production class. Currently, the procedure we follow for evaluation and critique is to play the work in the classroom, studio or computer lab and exchange comments in person. Sometimes students let their opinions and constructive criticism flow and sometimes its like pulling teeth!
Now I’ve found BlogAMP and I can suddenly imagine a class blog where students post their audio work and comment on each others' projects! BlogAMP allows a user to aggregate audio clips then play them from a player that can be embedded into a blog (such as mine below) or a website.
Registration for BlogAMP is quick and easy and there is a no-cost option as you can see from the screen shot below. The advantage to a paid membership is that BlogAMP will host your audio files. Traffic is unlimited with all plans and the more you pay, the more storage is provided. If you have a place where you can host your audio files online yourself, then you can take advantage of the free membership. This is the option I chose, and I’ll refer to this later.
Getting BlogAMP set up is pretty easy. Though I am disappointed that their site does not offer any tutorial videos, their FAQ page is extremely helpful and gave me all the tips I needed to set up my player.
The player menu (below) is very straight-forward. You can set up the look of the player, build and manage a playlist, publish the results and get statistics on usage.
To set up the skin or the look of player, you can choose one of their custom color skin templates or, with a properly formatted image file, you can even brand the player. I could then identify the player with my college or even my class. (I chose to skip branding).
The screen shot below shows the real meat of this Web 2.0 tool: the playlist section. Here is where .mp3 files are uploaded, or directed to the designated url so the embedded player can reach it. The user can easily upload a single cut or designate a playlist. I am impressed with the ease-of-use of this page. It is simple, direct, and would be easy for my students to learn.
Finally, the screen shot below shows the publishing stage. Here, an embed code is provided for pasting the player into a blog or website. At this point, the user decides on a player that will play a playlist of .mp3s or a single-play player.
This could be a very useful tool in my environment, especially in the hybrid class that I am creating for my Intro to Radio course. I can easily imagine having students record their assignments, then uploading their .mp3s and posting them to a class blog before they leave the studio. I could require students to evaluate and comment on at least 2 of their classmate’s assignments. Imagine the dialogue that such a procedure could create with the right guidance! No more teeth-pulling!
Thanks for the great tour of BlogAMP! I can clearly see how useful this will be for teaching your upcoming courses. I even have ideas for ways this could be used over in my field as well, thanks!
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