Audio Postcard: Walking in the Lewis Garden

in

See and download the full gallery on posterous

  
Download now or listen on posterous

Memo.m4a (1086 KB)

I have been looking for a method to post images, text, and audio to the web in a single post using my iPhone, and through the use of Posterous have come up with a work flow that does this for me. Posterous is a web publishing tool that you post to via email. You can attach digital files such as photos, audio files, video files and various text files to the email and they will automatically be formatted and posted to your Posterous blog. In addition you can set up your Posterous account so that anything you post to Posterous will also be posted other sites such as a blog, Twitter, Flickr, Picasa, Facebook and a number of other web publishing sites.

The example above is an audio postcard that I sent to Posterous via email from my iPhone. I started out by taking a few photographs in the garden. I then reviewed the images in the Photos app. In Photos you now have the option of selecting multiple images and once selected, you can copy them to the clipboard. Once I had my images on the clipboard, I then launched the Voice Memo app and recorded my audio message. In Voice Memo, you have the option of emailing your recorded memo. By selecting this option, Voice Memo launched the Mail app and attached the audio message to an email. I then addressed the email to my Posterous account, pasted in the images I had previously copied from the Photos app, added my text to the email message, and then sent the email to my Posterous account.

I'm toying with ways of using this in my work. Maybe keeping an audio journal in Posterous of classroom visits and walk throughs. Am thinking a teacher could set something like this up and utilize an iPod Touch to have students post a daily audio message about what went on that day in class. (If rumors are correct, the updated iPod Touch will include a camera and then they could be utilized in the manner I outlined above.) Posterous provides an option to make a Posterous blog post private and you can also set up multiple Posterous blogs... More to think about and play with...

Posted via email from Tim's posterous

Note: I do wish that Posterous would format the content on my blog, the way that it is formatted in my Posterous blog... See image below...

Audio Postcard: Walking in the Lewis Garden - Tim's posterous
Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

Your Flowing Data: Using Twitter to keep track of your life...

in

In a recent post, Alan Levine discussed the use of a web tool called Your Flowing Data. Your Flowing Data(YFD), is a Twitter application that lets you collect data about yourself. It allows you to use direct messages from your Twitter account to track different types of data. Basically, once you have set up your account, you just send a direct message to YFD to note and track just about anything. In Alan's post he noted some of his uses including keeping track of his blood sugar readings, his bike trips and his running mileage. Basically anything you want to track you can do so.

Alan's post got me thinking of how I might use this tool. As a principal I make many visits to classrooms each day. Using the method that Alan discussed I am thinking I can use this to keep track of classroom visits throughout the school day. On my iPhone I use the Twitter application Tweetie to follow and post to Twitter. I anticipate using Tweetie to post direct messages to Your Flowing Data as I visit classrooms. I believe I will find this a pretty quick method to note and track which classrooms I have visited and help me to recognize patterns and make sure I am visiting all classrooms equally.

This morning I was testing this and posted some sample data. Once you have some data, you can use the tools on Your Flowing Data to look at that information in a calendar view, a cloud view, a timeline view and a treemap view. The screenshot below shows the treemap view for the sample data i submitted. I'm looking forward to following Alan's examples and utilize this tool to keep track of other things including the types of tasks I find myself doing during the school day.

your.flowingdata / Treemap / classroom
Using some sample data, the Treemap above shows graphically the number of times a classroom was visited.
Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

Cross posted at TechLearning.com

Lewis Garden

in

Took a quick walk through the Lewis garden area and snapped a few images. Our volunteers have done a great job taking care of the garden over the summer...

Paletero Man

in

Paletero ManI have to say the sound of the bells on his cart is much nicer on the ears than that mechanical Scott Joplin played by the guys in the ice cream trucks back home... also the strawberry cream bar such beats an ice cream sandwich any day...