The Audio Journal is a monthly "executive briefing" on CD and as streaming audio on the Internet at www.audioed-online.com. It is published from September through May each year and each issue is 80 to 90 minutes in length. There is a main interview, about 45 minutes long with updates, briefing items, summaries of four or five recent journal articles and 10 to 15 minute excerpt of a major keynote presentation. The total time per year, for professional development purposes is 13 to 14 hours.

Because most of our subscribers /members will want to listen to the monthly executive briefing in the car. You can get a professionally recorded CD for $180.00 each month mailed first class to you personally. The "hard copy" is for you to keep and to share and to store. There is nothing more convenient and portable - and you will still have complete access to all the contents on the web site - a $100.00 value free to our CD subscribers. It is like getting unlimited access and a CD for $80.00 more - or for less than $ 9.00 more a month, you can be fully engaged with the unlimited resources of the Internet with the convenience of an CD.

By taking the position of the "Lead Learner" - first setting an example and second by creating an expectation. If you can find just three minutes a day (that is all it takes from Monday through Friday, September through May) so can your colleagues. Please tell them that you are every bit as busy as they are and you can find three minutes each day. Administrators rarely are too busy. They are too pre-occupied with other things. It is your responsibility to provide some sense of priorities.

The web site serves as both a platform and resource. For those who receive the Audio Journal on CD, the web site contains verbatim transcripts of all major interviews, excerpts of books discussed, relevant links and additional materials, much of which is exclusive to the Audio Journal. The web site offers "just-in-time" resources to compliment and expand the topics discussed on the CDs. In addition, any registered member can also access the audio files as MP3 files from the web site, hearing the entire issue (plus exclusive features not found on the CD). They can listen in real time from their computer, burn a CD or download into a MP3 player.

• In order to create CDs, you must have a CD-R or CD-RW capable drive installed in your PC. You must also have a blank CD-R or CD-RW disc.



• From the Audioed-Online web site, right click the file you want to burn onto CD. Select "Save Target As"…, and designate a folder where you will be saving all of your audio files. Audio files can be downloaded in MP3 or QuickTime format.



• After you have saved all the files you want burned onto CD, open an application for creating CDs. Any PC with a CD-R/RW drive installed will have some sort of CD creator software pre-installed. Windows XP comes with its own burning application, and many others are available. Visit www.roxio.com to view several other options.



• Most CD creator applications function similarly. The program will prompt you to create either a data or audio CD. For most projects it is best to choose the data CD option. This option lets you burn all forms of data, including audio and video clips. However, you will only be able to view and/or listen to these CDs on your computer. (((If you would like to listen to the audio files in car or stereo CD player, see steps 9)



• After opting to create a data CD, the program will allow you to select the files you want to burn onto CD. This is usually as simple as dragging from one window to another. Locate the folder where you saved the Audioed-Online audio files, and drag those files or folder into the window designated for saving to disc. An alternative method is to select the file you want saved to CD and click the add option from a toolbar or menu.



• Once you have selected all the files you want saved to CD, select the "Create CD" option. The program will begin recording and burning your CD. The length of time needed to create your CD depends on the size of the files being burned.



• When the data is finished recording, you will be notified that the CD burned successfully.



• If you wish to play the CD in your car, you need to convert the format from "MP3" to a "Wav" format. Unless your car player specifically can play MP3 files (usually high end players have the ability) You can learn more and download a converter by clicking on this link: http://www.audioutilities.com/mp3-to-wma/audio-mp3-to-wma-converter.htm Many burning software programs will also convert your MP3 files into Wav files, and vice versa.



• In Windows XP, you can select the downloaded audio files and create the CD through Windows Explorer. Open Windows Explorer, select the files downloaded from Audioed-Online, then drag and drop them onto the CD-R/RW drive containing the CD media. An option to create a CD will appear in the left window.

It can be done, but we don't recommend it. The memory is too limited to be worth the effort of transferring files.

If you are using a Macintosh with iTunes installed, you can now add this audio to your iTunes library and then to your iPod by following these steps:

• First, download the audio files to your computer for each section of the Event by clicking the download button next to each part above. Note: this file will be 15 to 20 megabytes of data.



• Once the files are on your computer, use Stuffit Expander or an unzipping application to expand each compressed file on your drive to the four MP3 files. On most Macs, this will happen automatically once the files have been downloaded.



• To add these to your iTunes Library, open iTunes and select "Add to Library" from the File menu. You will need to locate the MP3 files, select each, and click Okay to import the files to iTunes.



• To add these to your iPod, simply drag the tracks onto the icon for your iPod within iTunes. This icon should appear on the left hand side of the iTunes window whenever you plug your iPod into your Mac.
  
  Now you can listen to the audio from iTunes on your Mac or from your iPod the next time you connect to download audio.
  
  Your iPod suddenly has become a source of professional growth training.


For additional instructions please refer to the iTunes User's Guide

Just go to our web site and click on the "…evaluation or click on this link: http://www.audioed-online.com/newquiz/quizuser.asp Answer all five questions and your quiz will automatically be sent back to you and stored on our database, for future reference, You can access your scores anytime by calling us or you will receive a letter and a certificate at the end of the year (June) detailing your participation.