An Excuse To Go Shopping

Being selected as an ISTE17 Emerging Edublogger is a great excuse to go shopping. But, it's not what you think. I'm geeky, a title that I embrace, and I hate to spend money unless I absolutely have to.  But, for my Edublogging project, I need stuff. I am interviewing students and others and broadcasting using Periscope.  The interviews will be livestreamed to my Periscope channel at Periscope.tv/braveneutrino and to Twitter under the #ISTE17, #StudentShowcases and #PasstheScopeEDU hashtags.  The ISTE Twitter audience is huge so these interviews need to look and sound amazing, right? So... I need to shop for some stuff.

Purchase #1: The iRig Mic

I love this mic. It plugs into my Samsung S6. It has a long cord. It is directional, so it filters out the loud convention center noise and captures the voices of even the softest student interviewees. Check out this interview of adorable 3rd graders from my first interview project at NCTIES. (Pardon my awkwardness at the beginning or scroll to about 1:21 to hear the students.)  You can hear the students clearly even though in real life she was speaking in practically a whisper. And, you can see that I didn't need to hold the mic so close to her mouth.  I got better with positioning the mic as I got more experience doing the interviews.

Purchase #2: External Battery

Truth #1 - Periscope drains your battery like a boss. Truth #2 - Once your phone is down to about 30%, it's hopeless.  Truth #3 - Not all external batteries are created the same.  Truth #4 - Discovering all this in the middle of Periscoping your event is a bummer.

For ISTE, I'm bringing two external batteries;   the KMASHI 10000mAh Portable Power Bank with Dual USB Ports. This is going to be for charging low-use devices like my iPad.  The second batter is the Anker PowerCore II 20000 Portable Charger, 2000 mAh Power Bank with 3 Power IQ, 6A Output, Dual Input and 4A Fast Recharging. The Periscoping phone will be connected to this battery continually when scoping to keep it from draining down.  If needed, the fast charging connection will be helpful to get the phone recharged during down times.

Purchase #3: Microphone Logo Flag

This is the Foxnovo Square Cube Shaped Interview Mic Microphone Logo Flag Station.  This purchase is going to stretch my creativity, because I'm going to have to make a snazzy sticker. But, it's all part of the plan to amplify the message of the students that I'm interviewing. Sarah Thomas recently recommended Adobe Spark, so I think I'm going to try it using it to make the sticker(s).  The Logo Flag cube will let me display my blog URL, the #ISTE17 and #PasstheScopeEDU hashtags and my website sciencetoybox.com right on the microphone.

Purchase #4: Mic Covers

Next up is a 10-pack of Microphone Windscreen Foam Mic Covers. These have not arrived yet and I'm a little nervous because the reviews on Amazon were very up and down. Some reviewers were super happy and others got packs of covers with faded and smeared colors.  I'm hoping for the best.