Travel to China in a Soundscape

Need a vacation, but don't have the time?
 
 Well, you can sit back and pretend as you listen to this one minute soundscape of an evening strolling through a night market in China. The noisy Asian night market was a challenging theme, but I found some great sound clips on Soundcloud, which was simple to use. I've also become familiar with using Audacity, a free multi-track audio recorder and editor.

Can you tell what's going on in the soundscape? Click on Soundscape of a Chinese Night Market.

See answers below:

Background noise of people selling wares and food

Sequence of sounds:
Footsteps on loud street
Walking through arcade area
Child talking with mouth full
Bamboo flute player
Crunching on prawn chips
Man singing and saying "thank you" for tips
More crunching on chips
Beijing Opera music
Cart rolling on street 


   

How to Vlog

While Screencast-O-Matic serves as a useful tool in recording video blogs using a computer with a built-in camera, you can achieve the same results using a cell phone with a camera.  Here are a few pros and cons to consider.

Pros:

• You don't need to be in front of a computer to post a vlog.  You can just shoot the video selfie-style.
•  You don't need to download software.

Cons:

• After uploading from a cell phone, the video image appears as a vertical rectangle with black borders filling in the left and right sides of the screen.
• Holding the camera with your hand can make the video shaky.  Solution: Prop the camera up on a table.  Problem:  But finding a table tall enough to prop a camera on so that you don't have to squat or kneel on the ground to be seen, as well as selecting a nice background makes for a difficult combination.

Have I forgotten any? Let me know by commenting below.

4 Ways Vimeo Rocks over YouTube

Vimeo is an obvious alternative to YouTube, but since I haven't used it before, I didn't realize the amazing perks. Here are a few:

1. There are no ads! This is excellent to know if I'm looking for content to show to students in class so a commercial doesn't waste precious instructional minutes.
2. Vimeo has password protection so you don't have to set it to private mode; just give the recipient the password to view the video.
3.  You can upload from Google Drive to Vimeo. Great for GAFE users!

4. And the final reason...Vimeo users in general upload more meaningful content. That means less chance of having to wish that you can "unsee" (or "unhear") video footage!

From blog to vlog

I ended up taking a full month's hiatus from maintaining my blogsite.  Now that I've started a new course, ET 730: Multimedia in the Classroom (I know, multimedia sounds like an adjective, but I just read in my textbook how it's also used as a noun), I'm back in the saddle!  Our first assignment was to create a vlog, or video blog.  So here it is!  I discuss a few takeaways from the first few chapters of Wes Fryer's Playing with Media: Simple Ideas for Powerful Sharing and Richard E. Mayer's Multimedia Learning.