ClacksBlog

I found this new service.

Indabamusic

It sounds very interesting. It offers a browser based multi track recording and allows musicians across the world to work on the same session.

I wonder though whether bandwidth will be an issue and whether there is a talk-back facility via the web too.

Some of the major music software companies for some time have been keen to integrate some kind of online collaboration within their software. Ableton Live has Live Share. Protools have an online service which may cost extra. And even Garageband apples bundled recording software has an online collaboration angle.

Then I found this website Kompoz which looks interesting as musicians work and record using the software they own at home and then assuming the musicians you collaborate with have the same software they can add tracks to the recording session. Mixmatchmusic offers a similar but slightly different service. So too does Studiotraxx it’s a global musician for hire site where you pay musicians to work on your tracks.

Professional musicians and studios are always a bit suspicious of such web sites but it’s only a matter of time before a company offers a service like this and the technology exists to allow it to take off …

Maybe with the Indabamusic service and the others that time is coming closer.

I wonder who owns the masters though …

I found this post on web 3.0

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/something_new_in_2009.php

I also found this post which is also interesting.

http://www.macworld.com/article/140699/2009/05/socialnetworking.html?lsrc=rss_main

Heather Waddell and myself are in the process of doing Glow training in a number of local Primary schools.

The ‘Introduction to Glow’ session is based around the Glow Portal training guide although the screen-shots have been redone for each school so that the guide reflects the view of Glow that each member of staff sees once they log on.

St Bernadette’s Primary School

Staff have received one ‘Introduction to Glow’  session and have had 3 (1hr) follow up sessions introducing ‘Glow Groups’, each teacher has set up a Glow Group, set the group membership and started the process of putting some information into their glow group. A further training session on Glow Groups is planned before moving on to a series of sessions focusing on Glow Learn.

Claremont Primary

During a recent in-service day, staff received a full morning of Glow training this covered ‘Introduction to Glow’ and an ‘Introduction to Glow Groups’.

Sunnyside Primary School

Staff have received one ‘Introduction to Glow’ training session. A class at Sunnyside is also planning to work with a class from Menstrie Primary school on a ‘Fish go to School’ project via a Glow Group.

Park Primary

In August 2009 we are planning on doing an ‘Introduction to Glow’ training session and a series of ‘Introduction to Glow Groups’ sessions.

Other Work

Using the SCA (Site Content Administrator) log in, work has been started on Strathdevon Primary School, St. Bernadette’s Primary School, Claremont Primary School and Sunnyside Primary School establishment sites.

This work has included customising various areas within each establishment using the ‘Text Editor’ web part and setting up a ‘Glow Groups’ structure, currently though each site is at different stages of development.

Alva Academy have hit number one in the UK Independent Label charts with their ‘Haggis’ CD for Comic Relief.

I picked up the news via a blog post written by Head of Radio, Jeff Zycinski 

Here’s the proof              BBC Official Indies Chart

Well done to Alva Academy …

It isn’t very often that you see a well balanced article about “The Internet”, but I read one today which struck me as being so sensible that it was worthy of comment. Stephen Fry, on the BBC, talking sense, and even though I personally don’t “get” twitter, I pretty much agree with everything he says.

Here are a selection of guides and tutorials on using Audacity

1 Guide to Using Audacity

This is a excellent guide with plenty of screenshots and detailed step by step instructions.

2 Youtube Video it’s called advanced but don’t be put off by that as it gives an excellent overview of the software. The advanced techniques it describes are very useful to be aware of …

Youtube Advanced Audacity Tutorial Part One

Youtube Advanced Audacity Tutorial Part Two

3 Slideshow

This slideshow includes information on how to upload sound files to a blog.

If I find any other information I’ll add in to this post.

Menstrie and Sunnyside Primary schools are undertaking a joint fish go to school project using glow as a collaborative environment to share their experiences…

The second class in Sunnyside which isn’t glowing yet is hoping to blog their experiences here

so watch this space

I’ve been playing around with 3 websites which offer free wiki space.

Wikispaces : This seems to be quite popular amongst Scottish education professionals, however I’m not a fan of the look of the site although I suppose it’s functional … it also looks like something your teacher would give you when you were at school … which some Scottish teachers do … so maybe it’s very well designed or maybe it will turn some learners off …

Wetpaint : I’ve set up a private wiki on wetpaint. It’s much better to look at but I’m not that keen on the layout either. It has google type adverts displayed down the left hand panel and none of the templates on offer were particularly appealing.

Pbwiki : I’ll need to test it a bit more but it could be the best of the 3 but I’m not sure.

It seems to be the paid wiki hosting services offered by these sites allow you to customise the look and behaviour of your wiki. There’s no such thing as a free lunch. I suppose that for school use the basic service offered by the site will be fine.

6 Ways to save web news

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/6_ways_to_read_it_later.php

Bonus: Star it in Google Reader

If you’re using Google Reader to go through the never-ending process of reading feeds, Google’s ‘Star’ feature can be a great way to save items for later. To quickly process your feeds, change your display to ‘List View’ in Google Reader. Then star only the headlines that jump out at you. ‘Mark all as read’ and repeat until all your feeds have been processed. Now you won’t have so many feeds to read and a lot more time to weed through only what might be interesting whenever you have time.

University of Nottingham : Research into Web 2.0

http://terry-freedman.org.uk/artman/publish/article_1314.php

This article is 6 months old but may still be worth checking to see if software updates have fixed compatibility issues.

http://www.macworld.com/article/133790/2008/06/camcorder.html

The idea of hard disk based video cameras is great if it speeds up the digitising / editing process.