In honor of Memorial Day and also as an example of the versatile powers of ipadio, I am proud to present this recording of the “Star Spangled Banner” I made during a school band concert last week:

I started doing a podcast about four years ago when I was still a classroom teacher. It was a time consuming process. I would record it in multiple takes with a portable recorder; transfer all the files to a computer; listen to all the recording and pick out the best parts; copy those to a new file; edit the recording; add an introduction and conclusion; add the title, description and tags and upload the final sound file. I kept it up for several months but eventually stopped; it took too much time for the benefit I got out of it.

Although the process has gotten a bit easier over the years. it was still too complex and time-consuming for me to recommend for most classroom teachers. Until now. Thanks to Wes Fryer, I found out about a new website called ipadio which makes the process incredibly easy.

Basically, ipadio is a phone-in service: You call a number, say what you want to say and ipadio will publish a recording of it. Which is pretty cool, but not ideal for most people  - and schools especially – because you have to get it right the first time. I’ve found that most people want the option to have another go at it if they completely blow it or make too many mistakes.

But the killer feature of ipadio is that it has these new smartphone applications for the iPhone and Android where you can make a recording and then decide if you want to upload it or start over and record it again. So, a student can record themselves several times until they’re satisfied with the result before they have to upload it. At that point, the process is incredible easy. You just add the title and ipadio takes care of the rest! You can even moderate the recordings at the website before they go live so you can make sure nothing inappropriate gets through.

What’s also nice about ipadio is that it is integrated with many other websites. I started recording our school’s morning announcements and added it to iTunes. If I wanted, I could automatically add updates to Twitter and Facebook every time a new recording is published. I can even embed them into blogs! It really is amazingly easy and versatile.

The one fly in the ointment is that I know many teachers would be reluctant to hand over their expensive phones to a student. I’m hoping Apple’s new iPad will have the same functionality with the purchase of an microphone and an adapter.

The other flaw is that it seems that you can only have one podcast stream per phone number. I had the idea of recording my computer lab lessons but then they would be added into the morning announcements podcast and I don’t want that. I’d be nice if I could have two podcasts and then, after I recorded something, I could make a decision of which stream to add it to.

Also, I wonder how ipadio is planning to monetize this service. Other than a plan for businesses that cost money, everything is completely free. The website doesn’t even have ads on it. Are we going to see the developers charging for this wonderful service in the future? Will it then be too expensive for most teachers/schools?

I hope not. For now, ipadio is a wonderful tool and I highly recommend it.

There is a perceptive piece on privacy vs. openness by Steven Johnson in Time magazine. I was especially struck by this paragraph:

… There is no doubt that five years from now, when my children are teenagers, they will be comfortable living in public in ways that will astound and alarm their parents. I can already imagine how powerful the instinct to worry about predators and compromising photos will be. But it will be our responsibility to keep that instinct in check and to recognize that their increasingly public existence brings more promise than peril. We have to learn how to break with that most elemental of parental commandments: Don’t talk to strangers. It turns out that strangers have a lot to give us that’s worthwhile, and we to them.

I mostly agree with this, although I think there are more shades of grey than the above quote would indicate – which, to his credit, the author explores in that article. But, on the whole, I continue to believe it’s our responsibility as adults to help young people learn how to take advantage of the many opportunities that exist for them in safe and healthy ways.

I also understand opposite impulse as well. I have almost completely stopped publishing my thoughts online over the past year. I’ve been thinking of restarting this blog, especially in advance of going to ISTE in Denver next month, but usually nothing comes of it. I’m not a very good example, am I? It’s just that I feel I don’t have a whole lot to say and even less about anything anybody would care about.

I wonder if students feel that way sometimes.

Speaking of the iPad, I have to say my favorite app on it has to be the New York Times Editor’s Choice. I think it does a great job of bringing the experience of reading a newspaper in a digital format. No, you don’t get the tactile feel of leafing through the physical pages (or the ink on your fingers), but you do get the headlines, the photos and the placement of the stories in an eye-catching way which often will convey the story’s importance.

Instead of scanning a list of stories on most online news websites and stopping to read only the stories on topics I have an interest in, I find myself taking a close look at all the stories the Editor’s Choice app gives me. I don’t go on and read the full articles of all the stories, but I do read a much higher percentage of them.

It doesn’t present the whole paper and doesn’t give any option to see or search the NYT archives (presumably that’s coming in a subscription app), but what’s here is still pretty great. Just this weekend, I’ve read great stories about -

• The rise of flag football as a sport for girls in Florida high school
• Why college is overrated
• A housing boom in some cities where foreclosure rates are high and there’s already a glut of houses lying empty
• A lengthy profile of Times Square bomber suspect Faisal Shahzad

And many more! I’m looking forward to all the great information I’m going to find out tomorrow and in on-coming days.

When the iPad was first announced, it seemed like the most common reaction I heard was, “What am I going to use that for?”

I knew right away. While I liked all the capabilities and the portability of my iPhone and it was the device I had with me when I was in my living room while I was relaxing at the end of the day, it wasn’t ideal. It was too small to comfortably read a lot of text or do a lot of typing with. Very soon I figured out I would use my laptop at my desk, I would use my iPad in the rest of the house and I would take my iPhone with me whenever I left the house.

So in late April, I finally ordered it. I ordered a 16 GB model with 3G, and it was finally delivered on Wednesday.

So far, I’ve really been enjoying it. As a reading device, it is a much superior devise to read books and longer newspaper articles on it then a laptop or a mobile phone. The text is sharp (and adjustable!), and my eyes don’t feel strained after reading on it for long periods. Besides that, I’ve used it to check email, do some light web surfing and play audio. I haven’t watched any video on it and this blog entry is the first time I’ve tried to write anything on it.

Like the iPhone, I find the iPad’s keyboard a bit of a limitation, although I find it preferable to the small physical keyboards you find on many cellphones and the Kindle. Even in landscape mode, the keyboard is still too small to fit all your fingers to type with. Instead I’ve starting using a two-fingered method which seems to work fairly well, though not nearly as fast as I can type with a conventional keyboard. (I do have an older Apple wireless keyboard but my iPad couldn’t pair with it.)

Otherwise, the battery life is impressive as is the quality of the audio it plays from it’s miniscule speakers. Fingerprints are very noticeable when the device is off or in sleep mode; when the screen is lit up, I don’t notice them at all.

My only regret is not spending the extra money to get the 32 GB model. I easily filled up the 16 GB I have now and don’t even have any movies on it. I haven’t activated the 3G on it, I’ll try putting that to use next month when I go on a trip to Colorado and Minnesota.

“Should I get one?” you might be asking. It depends. If like me, you’ve been wanting a good e-reader, this would be an excellent choice. Or if you spend a lot of time on iPod Touch or iPhone apps but often wish the screen were larger, than an iPad is definitely for you. Otherwise you may want to hold off for awhile and see what kind of apps get developed for it.