Audio blogs at UCET 2008

khansen's picture
Submitted by khansen on Thu, 06/26/2008 - 19:06.

Whoa! I can't believe it is again the time of year to be thinking about UCET, the annual conference for the Utah Coalition for Educational Technology. Last year's conference was the first time for me to experience it and I have to say it was a great conference. The variety of sessions made available to attendees is impressive given it is only a state-level conference.
Apparently, the keynote speaker this year is David Pogue, columnist at the New York times, known for his witty technology reviews and podcast. I'm looking forward to hearing him speak. Rumor has it he is also a talented musician.
Anyhow, let's get down to business. I am presenting a session entitled "Audio Blogs: Podcast that Blog!", where I will be discussing several methods by which a text-based article in a blog can be automatically converted into a podcast with audio versions of the article available within 60-90 minutes of the article being published. In fact, you will likely see a link at the top of this very article that you can click on to listen to it.
Granted, it is computer generated audio and not 100% human sounding, but it does a pretty good job notwithstanding. Other than the geek factor of being able to say "listen to my blog", I envision this being a great tool for ESL (English and a Second Language) students, limited learning ability students, blind students, and many others. This can make content available to them in a differenct way that may be just the thing they need to grasp a concept.
My presentation will be at 2:30 pm on Friday afternoon if you want to come. Hopefully, I will be recording the session and perhaps even streaming it to ustream. At any rate, I will attach the handouts and video to this post as soon as they are available.
Later... Ok, so I didn't get video recorded. I'm sorry. However, here is my presentation/handout in 3 formats:

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