March 2005 Archives

Been exploringing more about podcasting the past couple days. Got hung up for hours on some quirky things related to iPodder. I was doing something with it in my testing that was not the normal function of it as an aggregator for rss feeds of mp3 files. Duffy sat down with me and after clicking and poking, found what it was. As Duffy said, it is not an intuitive piece of software. That said, the test feeds I was setting up worked. Jeff wrote that they were aggregated in his iPodder and uploaded into his iTunes without incident. That is good -- success. I have also been emailing with Ari Espinoza of UA News Services. Ari is an early adopter and I thought he probably had already checked this out. And he has. He sent me some XML that worked for me and made it easy to put the RSS feed together. Ari told me he does not care for iPodder and recommended checking out iPodderx next.

I also started a page on my personal website with links to podcasting articles and mp3s of presentations on podcasting. Follow that link you just passed to check it out.

Let's see, what else? I emailed Hector Gonzalez at KUAT to ask what he thought about making mp3s of AZ Illustrated episodes and making them available as mp3 downloads or podcasts (remember that podcast tends to mean broadcasting it to an Apple iPod and I'm not yet clear on how we do this to the many other mp3s now on the market.

For example, Dell sells a 20GB and 30GB Digital Jukebox MP3 Player  starting at $199 according to the website today. Follow this link to visit the page--tip, there is a "turn off music" link to click to stop the music if it's not your groove, ya dig? Back to AZ Illustrated. He is going to check with others at KUAT and get back. But it's an interesting example, don't you think, of what we, the UA, can be doing to reach more people. It's a guess on my part at this point but I wonder if there aren't people who would be interested in listening to, say, the Reporter's Roundtable, aired on Friday night's show, but are not at their TV at 6:30 p.m. Friday night. Sure they could TIVO it if they have TIVO, or set up a tape player to record it if 1) they remember to do it and 2) can figure out how. But if we routinely stream an mp3 of it, they can pop it into an mp3 player (or upload it to their PC or laptop) and listen to it on their own time. As regards AZ Illustrated, Jeff told me to guesstimate 1MB for each minute. He did not think disk storage would be an issue. (I always harken back to ~1983 when I got a new PC at UDEL with a 20MB harddisk and thought, Holy Cow!, am I set. That harddisk was filled up pretty quickly. But I digress. It's just like talking to me, isn't it. I also talked to Chris Johnson in the LTC about the May Learning Technology Showcase he is involved in planning. He thought the idea of recording and making podcasts of the featured sessions and forum on the future of learning technologies would be great uses of this technology too. If anyone reading this is wondering about good uses, I think this example is an excellent one. If you missed the LTS but were interested it the presentations and discussions, you could upload mp3s of it to your mp3 player (or laptop) and listen to them
when you had time. Sometimes I play these sorts of things on my computer while working on other things. Another great use, I think, is to send out language lab audio this way. Students could listen while they were doing whatever it is they do these days.

One other thing I did was to write the faculty using blogs this semester and ask them if they could ask their students if they have an mp3 player. It's not a scientific survey but could give us some anecdotal data to work with. That's about it for now. Check back on my blog to see what happens next.

I am exploring podcasting for the LTC at this time. I find it a very interesting way to push instructional content to students as MP3 files. I don't have real data about how many of our students have mp3 players -- Apple's iPod being the most recognized -- but I keep hearing that there are many who do. Apparently there is a way to use RSS feeds to push alerts to one's computer that a new podcast is available and it is then sync'ed to ones mp3 player.

Here's something I did that illustrates how practical this can be. Yesterday I downloaded an 45MB mp3 file of a presentation about podcasting given for Educause and sync'ed it to my iPod. First thing this morning to took my car in for your standard oil change, lube, and filter service. While sitting in the waiting room, I listend to 35 minutes of the 40+ minutes presentation, made notes, and got new ideas about doing podcasting here at the UA.

I can think of a myriad of uses of podcasting in this fashion. KUAT could send out an mp3 version of Arizona Illustrated. I don't know about you, but I am rarely at home watching it at 6:30 in the evening. If it was an mp3 synced to my iPod, I could listen to it when it was convenient for me. Suppose a journalism professor wanted students to hear the morning news from KUAT and crafted an assignment or teaching point out of it. Students could get it onto their mp3 players and listen to it that way. Another idea is to make keynote addresses by UA visitors available this way. If President Likins is speaking at an event that we are not able or even invited to attend here's our chance to hear it. Or at a conference hosted here at the UA we could make the speakers presentations available to people as mp3 files. For instructional purposes, I know the Treistman Center has many audio files for students studying such subjects as ethnomusicology. Instead of only hearing them at their computers, the students could hear them on their mp3 players -- The transparent classroom in action. Like most things we are doing, it will be wise to tie such use into part of an instructor's pedagogy.

I have more to understand about how to make this work, but am finding the idea to have merit for us at the UA.

SixApart, the software firm we license our MovableType blogging software from, has released an upgrade. This morning the LTC's systems admin, Henry Pfeil, installed it. The first time you go in to add an entry, you will see a little difference in the create entry template. There are more buttons to use. SixApart says that 3.15 is important because:

Version 3.15 fixes a vulnerability in the mail sending packages for all Movable Type versions in which the user has enabled comment notifications. This vulnerability allows a malicious user to send email through the application to any number of arbitrary users.

Please email me if you spot something odd. You shouldn't see anything odd, but ...

This came in on today's "CT News Update: An Online Newsletter from Campus Technology," an alerting service from 101 Communications that I get on email. Scott Cason's Enrollment Management group recently began offering about a dozen students blogs to write about their experiences at the UA. Eller's MIS program has several students working with blogs in a program it calls Student Insight. And Center for English as a Second Language (CESL) just had a few blogs set up for CESL students. So I would say that we are moving in the right direction based upon the information reported below.

Blogging Viewed as Influence on Student School Choice

Over three-fourths of the time prospective students spend searching for the right school is spent on the Internet, according to a recent Harris Interactive poll. Which means the latest Internet trend-blogging -will increasingly play a role in students' decision about where to apply and where to go to school, according to a firm that specializes in student recruiting.

Edu Internet Strategies believes blogs "can no longer be considered luxuries. Many students already use blogs in their daily routine, quickly making e-mail obsolete. Thus, incorporating blogs is a necessary service that potential students expect."

George Waldie, director of the company, said campus admissions departments should incorporate the technology into their recruiting strategies. "Not only are they edgy, honest assessments and opinions attuned to the perspective of today's youth, but they are also
a great way to drive traffic to your site," he said. "Search engines love blogs because they have archives, links and continuously updated content. But optimization is still important because search engines can quickly become flooded with blogs."

One of my LTC colleagues sent out this obit on Jef Raskin. I thought it was worth noting on the blog in case it escaped anyone else's notice. You might try a search in google on him to read more tributes.
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Pacifica, CA February 27, 2005--Jef Raskin, a mathematician, orchestral soloist and composer, professor, bicycle racer, model airplane designer, and pioneer in the field of human-computer interactions, died peacefully at home in California on February 26th, 2005 surrounded by his family and loved ones. He had recently been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

Jef created the Macintosh computer as employee number 31 at Apple in the early 1980s, revolutionizing computer interface design. Jef invented "click and drag" and many other methods now taken for granted by computer users. He named the Macintosh project after his favorite variety of apple, the McIntosh, modifying the spelling for copyright purposes. Jef's article "Holes in the Histories"
addresses some popular misconceptions about the Macintosh Project. Jef strongly believed that computers should make tasks easy for people, not the other way around. For twenty-five more years, his work focused on improving interfaces, culminating in his book, The Humane Interface (Addison-Wesley, 2000). Jef created the Raskin Center for Humane Interfaces (RCHI), which will soon release a preview of Archy, a culmination and exemplar of his design principles. Archy redesigns the basic building blocks of computing to demonstrate an entirely new paradigm for computer use. RCHI will continue under the technical leadership of Jef's son, Aza Raskin.