Setting up a School Internet Radio Station

Well, I am in the best mood ever!

With very little fiddling around, I've set up an internet radio station for my school.

Once set up, you simply upload some MP3 sound files, and people who tune into the radio station hear them broadcast live.

To listen in, go to http://shoutcast.com/directory/search_results.jsp?searchCrit=simple&s=Booralie and click 'Tune In!' (At the time of publishing this post, most the of the content has been made by me. The station is only a few hours old. In a few days we'll have student content, and I'll blog again about it).

In our case, we then nominate our radio station as the media stream to play in our 3D virtual world (which we call 'Booralie Island', using the Second Life program. Our students and teacher use this space in parrallel with the physical space of the classroom. It is early days, but a strong community has sprung up).

 [here a student has a created a huge version of the periodic table]

 Anyway, back to the radio station...

THINK OF THE POSSIBILITIES!
- drama students broadcasting entertaining radio plays
- music students recording their compositions
- students of ANY subject, ANY age recording entertaining educational recordings.
- English students speaking from the perspective of a character in the text they're studying, or giving a book review.
- recorded debates
- health and diet tips from students studying nutrition
- students read their creative writing or poetry
- history students retell historical events in a dramatic mode!
- study tips, pretend advertisements, and so on!

Students create MP3 files with a headset (cheap headsets work fine, by the way) and free 'Audacity' software available here: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/

HOW TO SET UP AN INTERNET RADIO STATION
The way I did it:

1. Set up an internet server that will run your station for you. Go to http://shoutcast.setnine.com/ and decide how many people you want to be able to listen to the station at the same time, and at what quality. I think you want at least 'Bit Rate: 64 Kbps' but any higher than costs more with little increase in quality. We selected 25 listeners maximum. Click on what you want and then you'll have to pay by PayPal or credit card. I paid on credit card and will claim the money back from school.

THE COST FOR MY OPTIONS - $37.50 US per month (or about 60 Australian Dollars)

2. Once setnine.com has set you up (it took them 3 days for me), you'll be emailed a username and password. You log into the website when you want, and upload your audio files. You can create playlists and set them to play on a loop in a certain order, or you can even 'DJ', using the software WINAMP, to run your station live.

To listen to our radio station, click here and then click on "Tune In!"

It won't be hard to maintain and run the station. I'll get a pool of audio files from various teachers, or even direct from inspired students. I simply upload them to the website, and the radio server does the rest!

Web 2.0 Services Pulling the Rug Out

It has now been three

FrenchFM Worksheets

Here are the worksheets for our FrenchFM channel on YouTube:

Pilot Show - Download FrenchFM Emission Pilote worksheet

Episode 1 Tricolore #1, Unit 1 - Download FrenchFM Episode 1 worksheet

Episode 2 Tricolore #1, Unit 9 - worksheet coming soon

Mass Student Shock Reaction

I announced on Thursday morning at assembly that our school had acquired 3D Virtual property.

When I made this announcement there was a shock-reaction amongst all our students. It was one of those spontaneous crowd response moments. There was a some laughter, but it wasn't mocking laughter, it was disbelief laughter. It was quite an electric moment.

The shocked reaction of the students in itself holds a lot of meaning to me.

Why would students be so shocked that technology they'd almost all be accustomed to, is being used in a school context? Why is it unheard of?

The tools that our young people use to connect socially & to express themselves creatively, ought also to be provided to them in school and harnassed for learning.

I announced that we were wanting to recruit moderators for the virtual world & that we'd let them in early. At the meeting I held at lunch, there was an overwhelming crowd and I had to turn many students away (they came back the next day to an alternative meeting).

On Friday, the day after the announcement, a core group of students had filled in applications to be moderators and had permission slips signed.

So I set them up.

I write this on Sunday evening. What a weekend it has been.

On Friday night there was chaos... students trying every wacky thing they could. Objects strewn everywhere. They immediately discovered all kinds of stuff I didn't know existed. One student wore about 8 parrots on his avatar. Others discovered they could become dinosaurs.

On Saturday I gave some of the students plots of land to build on. By Saturday night one of them had created a shop. By Sunday morning he had stocked it with a virtual version of our school uniform.

By Sunday evening, more buildings, including a paint-ball maze and a parrot shop with a teleporter to a building way up in the sky.

And that's the students, while several of my colleagues have worked on some beautiful facilities near a waterfall, and a 'fortress of physics' up in the sky. (My colleagues are on Twitter - @tim__barrett and @peter_robson).

Update on our Teen Second Life estate

Here's how things have been going...

Before Christmas we placed an order for a Private Estate in Teen Second Life, which is a 3D virtual world that users themselves create and build.

The order came through a few weeks ago, with me set up as the estate owner. From that point only I could access our virtual estate! Since then we've transferred about 5 of my colleagues who showed interest last year. In a few more days we'll transfer another 20 or so who've shown interest in the new year.

We still have to set up a system to allow the creation of student accounts. I'm waiting on Linden Lab to get that set up for me at the moment.

In the meantime, I've been terraforming our estate, ready for its first inhabitants!

I've set it up as an island covered with forest. There's only one small building... as if we're settlers in a new land.

Today I've spent some time creating special surprises for students (& teachers). I want to create a lot more before our settlers arrive.

Click on the images below to make them open in their full size in a new window:

A view of the island. Hmmm the mountains look a bit ridiculous and pointy, don't they?

This looks like just water... but...

even though under the water looks normal too... there is a hidden cavern under this sand!

So how to you get in? Well there's a hidden entrance to be found...

And after following a long, windy passage you get to the cavern under the sea...

So, next I thought I'd try something more ambitious - a much bigger hidden cavern in the middle of a mountain. As you can see, to create these hidden caverns you have to dig a ditch in the landscape and then cover it up with a ceiling... you then disguise the ceiling to look like the landscape.

Here I've just added the first parts of the ceiling over two huge, steep arms that I've extended from the mountain.

A few minutes later...

And now we jump to the final version... I had huge troubles disguising both the ceiling and the front covering. I ended up shoving trees everywhere! This will have to do for now, oh well!

Finally, I've noticed little shapes appearing around the island. A good sign that my colleagues are beginning to experiment with building.

I've have plenty of conversations with a range of teachers who are keen to give this a go with their students. I'll blog as it happens!