Thank you to whoever nominated the Virtual Staffroom for an Edublog Award in the Best Use of Educational Audio category.  It’s truly an honour to be nominated!  Thanks!

Jane Nicholls, Chrissy Hellier, Allanah King and Simon Evans are leading educators from New Zealand who live and breathe collaborative technologies. In this episode I get to chat with them about topics as diverse as podcasting, Skype, Twitter and Second Life, and have a lot of fun in the process. Simon had a bit of trouble with Skype and only managed to make a couple of cameo appearances, but the rest of us had a great chat as we flitted from topic to topic. Although these Kiwis know how to have a laugh, there is still plenty of educational wisdom in this podcast.

• Appleby Podcasts - Allanah’s class podcasting
• Skype - For internet telephony, if you can make it work
• Twitter - For building community, once you finally “get it”
• Second Life - A place to do the caramel dance and land naked in fires

Also, you might like to check out the blogs of Allanah, Chrissy, Jane and Simon.

Not much else to add about this one, but I think you’ll like it. Don’t forget to leave a comment!

 Episode 20: The Kiwi Connection: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

In this episode of Virtual Staffroom, podcaster and teacher Chris Betcher gets interviewed by Texan librarian Carolyn Foote. Carolyn and Chris discuss a range of issues including different techniques for recording podcasts, dealing with the restrictions of policies and filters, the use of Skype as a powerful tool for cross-cultural learning, and pretty much anything else that came to mind!

Carolyn asked if we could record this chat for a librarian’s research project she was working on about the use of Skype for educational purposes, and we agreed to have the chat and release it on the Virtual Staffroom as well.

• Skype - Free VOIP Internet telephony
• Audacity - Free and Open Source multitrack audio recorder
• GarageBand - Apple’s amazing multitrack audio and podcast editor
• Levelator - Make your recordings sound their very best
• Operator11 - Multi camera video shoots
• Women of Web 2.0 - An excellent educational webcasting project
• iSight - Apple’s built-in webcam tool
• The Plague of Plagiarism - Chris’s blog post about plagiarism
• The Economist - Article about debating mentioned by Carolyn

Thanks to Carolyn for suggesting this chat and helping us to have such a fun (and hopefully useful) conversation.

Leave us a comment!

 Episode 19: Beyond the Filters: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Anne Wade is research project manager at Montreal’s Concordia University, and her focus is on a project known as ePearl - the Electronic Portfolio Encouraging Active Reflective Learning. ePearl is a web-based tool that enables students to gather, present and reflect upon their class work, creating a trail of digital assets that follows them through their school life.

In this episode Anne presents an overview of the system and gives some insight into the background of this project.

Links from this episode…

• ePearl Overview - for an explanation of what the system does
• ePortfolio Information - More background on ePortfolios
• CSLP/CEAP - the homepage for the project
• Demo site - Go have a look for yourself

Login details for the demo site as follows:

Student environment:
Early elementary - Level 1 : Usernames: student1a, student1b, student1c
Late elementary - Level 2: Usernames: student2a, student2b, student2c
Secondary - Level 3: Usernames: student3a, student3b, student3c

Teacher environment:
Level1: Usernames: teacher1a, teacher1b, teacher1c
Level 2: Usernames:teacher2a, teacher2b, teacher2c
Level3: Usernames:teacher3a, teacher3b, teacher3c

Password is always - 123

Enjoy.

 Episode 18: The Learning Trail: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download