August 2007 Archives

There is an anniversary of sorts this summer and a lot of news sources are picking up the thread and putting their own spin on the story. What is it? Blogs, it seems, have turned 10 years old. And with the widespread use of RSS feeds pushing entries to one's desktop, [watch a Flash movie from Common Craft, "RSS in Plain English"] it's easy to subscribe to particular blogs and stay attuned to the news, topics of interest, and pithy comments from all sorts.

In mid-July the Wall Street Journal ran a story, "Happy Blogiversary," and described the origins of blogging:

We are approaching a decade since the first blogger -- regarded by many to be Jorn Barger -- began his business of hunting and gathering links to items that tickled his fancy, to which he appended some of his own commentary. On Dec. 23, 1997, on his site, Robot Wisdom, Mr. Barger wrote: "I decided to start my own webpage logging the best stuff I find as I surf, on a daily basis," and the Oxford English Dictionary regards this as the primordial root of the word weblog.

This summer my main project was getting our UA presence on iTunes U up and running. As you know from many other messages, I've been podcasting to my classes and students in my classes have created podcasts for a number of assignments each semester. The LTC has provided support for faculty, instructors, departments and programs interested in podcasting over the past two years. We've had several faculty who have recorded lectures, and there are a couple programs or departments taking advantage of this effective, popular and inexpensive means to push information to people's desktops. Still, we've not touched the tip of the proverbial iceberg in terms of campus participation.

What we hope happens next, is that with Monday, August 20th's, unveiling of our presence on Apple, Inc.'s, iTunes U, we'll generate much more interest and actual participation.

To see our site, go to itunes.arizona.edu.

The news release published last Thursday by UA News resulted in short articles in the two local newspapers, the Arizona Daily Star and Tucson Citizen. Monday morning just after 6 a.m., I met a KOLD TV reporter down by the Cherry Street garage. She was doing short reports from campus for KOLD's morning news program. Around 06:35 she did a quick introduction, held the mic to my mouth and I did 30 seconds about UA on iTunes U. I'm glad that I led off by saying how the UA has an outreach mission to the community and UA on iTunes U fits that nicely.

To read the LTC's current UA on iTunes U plan visit our podcasting website and follow the link under the UA on iTunes U image. In a nutshell, we are promoting UA on iTunes U during fall semester, publishing publicly accessible podcasts in our iTunes U store, and in January '08, adding the authentication and web services features.